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Title: Generals Die in Bed
Author: Harrison, Charles Yale (1898-1954)
Date of first publication: 1930
Edition used as base for this ebook:
New York and Chicago: A. L. Burt
[undated, but the "recent fiction" listed at the end
of the book suggests a date within two or three
years of the copyright date of 1930]
Date first posted: 21 January 2014
Date last updated: 21 January 2014
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1150

This ebook was produced by Al Haines

GENERALS
DIE IN
BED

By

CHARLES YALE
HARRISON

A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
New York Chicago

Published by arrangement with William Morrow & Co.
Printed in U. S. A.

COPYRIGHT, 1928, 1929, 1930,
BY CHARLES YALE HARRISON

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

TO

THE BEWILDERED YOUTHS—BRITISH,
AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN AND
GERMAN—WHO WERE KILLED IN
THAT WOOD A FEW MILES BEYOND
AMIENS ON AUGUST 8TH, 1918,
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

All names in this book are fictitious,
and no character in the story should be
identified with any living person.

Portions of this book have appeared inNew Masses, Morada, Die Welt am
Abend (Berlin), Die Neue Bucherschau
(Berlin) and other periodicals in
America and Europe.

CHAPTER ONE

RECRUITS

It is after midnight on pay-day. Some of
the recruits are beginning to dribble into
the barracks bunk-room after a night's
carousal down the line.

"Down the line" in Montreal is Cadieux
Street, St. Elizabeth Street, Lagauchetiere
Street, Vitre Street, Craig Street—a square
mile of dilapidated, squalid red brick houses
with red lights shining through the transoms,
flooding the sidewalks with an inviting, warm
glow. The houses are known by their numbers,
169 or 72 or 184.

Some of us are lying in our bunks,
uncovered, showing our heavy gray woolen
underwear—regulation Army issue.

The heavy odor of stale booze and women
is in the air. A few jaundiced electric lights
burn here and there in the barnlike bunk-room
although it is long after "lights out."

In the bunk next to mine lies Anderson, a
middle-aged, slightly bald man. He comes
from somewhere in the backwoods of northern
Ontario and enlisted a few weeks ago. He was
a Methodist lay preacher in civilian life. He
is reading his Bible. The roistering arrivals
annoy him. The conversation is shouted across
the bunk-room:

"—— 'three bucks?' I says. 'What the hell!
D'yuh know there's a war on? I don't wantta
buy yuh,' I says, 'I only want yuh for about
twenty minutes.'"

There is a roar of laughter.

"—— 'I'm thirsty,' I says. 'Where's the
water?' When she's gone I dips into her
pocket-book and sneaks me two bucks."

A skeptical silence greets this.

"—— yeah, that's what you wish had happened."

"Ask Brownie, he heard her bellyachin'—dincha,
Brownie?"

A singing, drunken trio burst through the
door of the bunk-room and for a moment
drowns out the controversy.

A young lad, not more than seventeen,
staggers to the center of the room and retches
into the slop-can.

Obscene roars from the bunks.

The boy sways.

"Hold it, Billy, hold it."

"Missed it, by God!"

A howl of delight.

The boy staggers back to his bunk. His face
is a greenish-yellow under the dim lights.

In the far corner of the dormitory some of
the boys begin to sing a war song. They sing
with a mock pathos.

I don't want to die, I don't want to die,
The bullets they whistle, the cannons they roar,
I don't want to go up the line any more.
Take me over the sea, where Heinie he can't get at me;
Oh, my, I'm too young to die,
I want to go home.

Catcalls and hootings greet the end of the
song. There is a silence and then the desultory
conversation is resumed. The remarks are
addressed to no one in particular. They are
hurled into the center of the room and he who
wills may reply.

"—— hey, lissen, fellers, don't none of you
go down to 184 any more; they threw one of
our men out to-night."

"Sure, we'll bust her joint up."

I look at Anderson. His forehead is drawn
into furrows. He frowns. Little beads of
perspiration stand out on his red face. The
room is fouled with the odors of dissipation.
He waits cautiously for a lull in the conversation.
With a spring he jumps into the middle
of the room, the seat of the underwear which is
too big for him hanging comically in his rear.
In an evangelical voice he cries:

"Men, do you know you're sinning in the
eyes of the Lord?"

A salvo of oaths greets him.

"Shut up."

"Go to hell."

"Take a jump in the lake."

He is undeterred. He continues:

"Some of you men would put your bodies
where I wouldn't put my swagger stick."

"Shut up, sky-pilot."

"It's good for pimples."

He stands on the bare floor facing the torrent
of ribaldry. His long red face is set. His
voice sounds like an insistent piccolo above
the braying of trombones.

"Well, anyway God didn't make your
bodies for that."

He goes back to his bed.

The orderly sergeant crashes through the
door and faces us menacingly.

The room is quiet.

*****

Our train is to leave Bonaventure Station at
eight. At four the officers try to get the men
in shape. More than half the battalion is
drunk. Pails of black coffee are brought
around. Some of the bad ones have buckets
of cold water sluiced over them.

It takes an hour to line the men for parade
outside the barracks. Men are hauled out of
their bunks and strapped into their equipment.
They stare vacantly into the faces of those who
jostle them.

Outside in the streets we hear the sounds of
celebration.

Fireworks are being exploded in our honor.

The drunks are shoved into position.

The officers take their places.

The band strikes up and we march and
stagger from the parade square into the street.

Outside a mob cheers and roars.

Women wave their handkerchiefs.

When we come to the corner of St. Catherine
and Windsor Streets a salvo of fireworks
bursts over the marching column. It letters
the night in red, white and blue characters.
The pale faces of the swaying men shine under
the sputtering lights. Those of us who are
sober steady our drunken comrades.

Flowers are tossed into the marching ranks.

Sleek men standing on the broad wide steps
of the Windsor Hotel throw packages of
cigarettes at us. Drunken, spiked heels crush
roses and cigarettes underfoot.

The city has been celebrating the departure
of the battalion. All day long the military
police had been rounding up our men in
saloons, in brothels. We are heroes, and the
women are hysterical now that we are leaving.
They scream at us:

"Good-by and good luck, boy-y-y-ys."

They break our ranks and kiss the
heavily-laden boys. A befurred young woman puts
her soft arm around my neck and kisses me.
She smells of perfume. After the tense
excitement of the day it is delightful. She turns her
face to me and laughs. Her eyes are soft. She
has been drinking a little. Her fair hair shines
from under a black fur toque. I feel lonely.
I do not want to go to war. She marches along
by my side. The battalion is no longer
marching. It straggles, disorganized, down the
street leading to the station.

I am only eighteen and I have not had any
experiences with women like this. I like this
girl's brazenness.

"Kiss me, honey," she commands. I obey.
I like all this confusion now. War—heroes—music—the
fireworks—this girl's kiss. Nobody
notices us. I hang on to her soft furry
arm. I cling to it as the station looms at the
bottom of the street.

She is the last link between what I am
leaving and the war. In a few minutes she will be
gone. I am afraid now. I forget all my fine
heroic phrases. I do not want to wear these
dreadfully heavy boots, nor carry this leaden
pack. I want to fling them away and stay
with this fair girl who smells faintly of
perfume. I grip her arm tightly. I think I
could slip away unseen with her. We could
run through the crowd, far away somewhere.
I remember the taunting song, "Oh, my, I'm
too young to die." I am hanging on to her arm.

"Hey, soldier boy, you're hurting my arm."

We are at the station. We are hustled
inside. We stagger into the trains. We drop
into seats. We wait, for hours, it seems. The
train does not move. The singing and cheering
outside dies down. In a little while the
station is deserted. Only a few lonely baggage
men and porters move here and there. At last
the train slowly begins to move....

The boys lie like sacks of potatoes in the red
plush-covered seats. Some of us are green
under the gills. White-faced, we reel to the
toilets. The floor is slimy and wet.

CHAPTER TWO

IN THE TRENCHES

We leave the piles of rubble that was
once a little Flemish peasant town
and wind our way, in Indian file,
up through the muddy communication trench.
In the dark we stumble against the sides of
the trench and tear our hands and clothing on
the bits of embedded barbed wire that runs
through the earth here as though it were a
geological deposit.

Fry, who is suffering with his feet, keeps
slipping into holes and crawling out, all the
way up. I can hear him coughing and panting
behind me.

I hear him slither into a water-filled hole. It
has a green scum on it. Brown and I fish him out.

"Here, sergeant, stick a bayonet up his
behind—that'll make him move." A few of us
help Fry to his feet, and somehow we manage
to keep him going.

We proceed cautiously, heeding the warnings
of those ahead of us. At last we reach our
positions.

*****

It is midnight when we arrive at our positions.
The men we are relieving give us a few
instructions and leave quickly, glad to get out.

It is September and the night is warm. Not
a sound disturbs the quiet. Somewhere away
far to our right we hear the faint sound of
continuous thunder. The exertion of the trip up
the line has made us sweaty and tired. We
slip most of our accoutermcnts off and lean
against the parados. We have been warned
that the enemy is but a few hundred yards
off, so we speak in whispers. It is perfectly
still. I remember nights like this in the
Laurentians. The harvest moon rides overhead.

Our sergeant, Johnson, appears around the
corner of the bay, stealthily like a ghost. He
gives us instructions:

"One man up on sentry duty! Keep your
gun covered with the rubber sheet! No smoking!"

He hurries on to the next bay. Fry mounts
the step and peers into No Man's Land. He
is rested now and says that if he can only get
a good pair of boots he will be happy. He has
taken his boots off and stands in his stockinged
feet. He shows us where his heel is cut. His
boots do not fit. The sock is wet with blood,
He wants to take his turn at sentry duty first
so that he can rest later on. We agree.

Cleary and I sit on the firing-step and talk quietly.

"So this is war."

"Quiet."

"Yes, just like the country back home, eh?"

We talk of the trench; how we can make it
more comfortable.

We light cigarettes against orders and cup
our hands around them to hide the glow. We
sit thinking. Fry stands motionless with his
steel helmet shoved down almost over his eyes.
He leans against the parapet motionless.
There is a quiet dignity about his posture. I
remember what we were told at the base about
falling asleep on sentry duty. I nudge his
leg. He grunts.

"Asleep?" I whisper.

"No," he answers, "I'm all right."

"What do you see?"

"Nothing. Wire and posts."

"Tired?"

"I'm all right."

The sergeant reappears after a while. We
squinch our cigarettes.

"Everything O.K. here?"

I nod.

"Look out over there. They got the range
on us. Watch out."

We light another cigarette. We continue
our aimless talk.

"I wonder what St. Catherine Street looks like—"

"Same old thing, I suppose—stores, whores,
theaters—"

"Like to be there just the same—"

"Me too."

We sit and puff our fags for half a minute
or so.

I try to imagine what Montreal looks like.
The images are murky. All that is unreality.
The trench, Cleary, Fry, the moon overhead—this
is real.

In his corner of the bay Fry is beginning to
move from one foot to another. It is time to
relieve him. He steps down and I take his
place. I look into the wilderness of posts and
wire in front of me.

After a while my eyes begin to water. I
see the whole army of wire posts begin to move
like a silent host towards me.

I blink my eyes and they halt.

I doze a little and come to with a jerk.

So this is war, I say to myself again for the
hundredth time. Down on the firing-step the
boys are sitting like dead men. The thunder
to the right has died down. There is
absolutely no sound.

I try to imagine how an action would start.
I try to fancy the preliminary bombardment.
I remember all the precautions one has to take
to protect one's life. Fall flat on your belly,
we had been told time and time again. The
shriek of the shell, the instructor in trench
warfare said, was no warning because the shell
traveled faster than its sound. First, he had
said, came the explosion of the shell—then
came the shriek and then you hear the firing
of the gun....

From the stories I heard from veterans and
from newspaper reports I conjure up a picture
of an imaginary action. I see myself getting
the Lewis gun in position. I see it spurting
darts of flame into the night, I hear the roar
of battle. I feel elated. Then I try to fancy
the horrors of the battle. I see Cleary, Fry
and Brown stretched out on the firing-step.
They are stiff and their faces are white and
set in the stillness of death. Only I remain alive.

An inaudible movement in front of me pulls
me out of the dream. I look down and see
Fry massaging his feet. All is still. The moon
sets slowly and everything becomes dark.

The sergeant comes into the bay again and
whispers to me:

"Keep your eyes open now—they might
come over on a raid now that it's dark. The
wire's cut over there—" He points a little
to my right.

I stand staring into the darkness. Everything
moves rapidly again as I stare. I look
away for a moment and the illusion ceases.

Something leaps towards my face.

I jerk back, afraid.

Instinctively I feel for my rifle in the corner
of the bay.

It is a rat.

It is as large as a tom-cat. It is three feet
away from my face and it looks steadily at
me with its two staring, beady eyes. It is fat.
Its long tapering tail curves away from its
padded hindquarters. There is still a little
light from the stars and this light shines faintly
on its sleek skin. With a darting movement it
disappears. I remember with a cold feeling
that it was fat, and why.

Cleary taps my shoulder. It is time to be
relieved.

*****

Over in the German lines I hear quick, sharp
reports. Then the red-tailed comets of the
minenwerfer sail high in the air, making
parabolas of red light as they come towards us.
They look pretty, like the fireworks when we
left Montreal. The sergeant rushes into the
bay of the trench, breathless. "Minnies," he
shouts, and dashes on.

In that instant there is a terrific roar directly
behind us.

The night whistles and flashes red.

The trench rocks and sways.

Mud and earth leap into the air, come down
upon us in heaps.

We throw ourselves upon our faces, clawing
our nails into the soft earth in the bottom of
the trench.

Another!

This one crashes to splinters about twenty
feet in front of the bay.

Part of the parapet caves in.

We try to burrow into the ground like
frightened rats.

The shattering explosions splinter the air in
a million fragments. I taste salty liquid on
my lips. My nose is bleeding from the force
of the detonations.

SOS flares go up along our front calling
for help from our artillery. The signals sail
into the air and explode, giving forth showers
of red, white and blue lights held aloft by a
silken parachute.

The sky is lit by hundreds of fancy fireworks
like a night carnival.

The air shrieks and cat-calls.

Still they come.

I am terrified. I hug the earth, digging my
fingers into every crevice, every hole.

A blinding flash and an exploding howl a
few feet in front of the trench.

My bowels liquefy.

Acrid smoke bites the throat, parches the
mouth. I am beyond mere fright. I am
frozen with an insane fear that keeps me
cowering in the bottom of the trench. I lie flat
on my belly, waiting....

Suddenly it stops.

The fire lifts and passes over us to the
trenches in the rear.

We lie still, unable to move. Fear has
robbed us of the power to act. I hear Fry
whimpering near me. I crawl over to him with
great effort. He is half covered with earth and
debris. We begin to dig him out.

To our right they have started to shell the
front lines. It is about half a mile away. We
do not care. We are safe.

Without warning it starts again.

The air screams and howls like an insane woman.

We are getting it in earnest now. Again
we throw ourselves face downward on the
bottom of the trench and grovel like savages
before this demoniac frenzy.

The concussion of the explosions batters
against us.

I am knocked breathless.

I recover and hear the roar of the bombardment.

It screams and rages and boils like an angry
sea. I feel a prickly sensation behind my
eyeballs.

A shell lands with a monster shriek in the
next bay. The concussion rolls me over on my
back. I see the stars shining serenely above
us. Another lands in the same place.
Suddenly the stars revolve. I land on my
shoulder. I have been tossed into the air.

I begin to pray.

"God—God—please..."

I remember that I do not believe in God.
Insane thoughts race through my brain. I
want to catch hold of something, something
that will explain this mad fury, this maniacal
congealed hatred that pours down on our
heads. I can find nothing to console me,
nothing to appease my terror. I know that
hundreds of men are standing a mile or two
from me pulling gun-lanyards, blowing us
to smithereens. I know that and nothing else.

I begin to cough. The smoke is thick. It
rolls in heavy clouds over the trench, blurring
the stabbing lights of the explosions.

A shell bursts near the parapet.

Fragments smack the sandbags like a
merciless shower of steel hail.

A piece of mud flies into my mouth. It is
cool and refreshing. It tastes earthy.

Suddenly it stops again.

I bury my face in the cool, damp earth. I
want to weep. But I am too weak and shaken
for tears.

We lie still, waiting....

*****

We do not know what day it is. We have
lost count. It makes no difference whether
it is Sunday or Monday. It is merely
another—a day on which one may die.

The shelling a few nights ago smashed our
section of the trench. We built it up again
and the next night another shell demolishes it.
We are now exposed to rifle fire on our left
flank. There are snipers in the woods about
half a mile away. All day long we have to
crawl on our bellies. Brownie straightened up
for a moment when he was going to the latrine
yesterday and a sniper knocked his helmet off.
He came into the dugout and related his
experience to us:

"God, a man can't even pump ship without
being shot at. Some war!"

*****

We are supposed to be resting, but rest is
impossible; we are being eaten alive by lice.
We cannot sleep for them. We sit and talk,
and dig feverishly in our chests, under our
arms, between our legs. Our rambling conversation
is interrupted by sharp little cracks as
we crush the vermin between our thumb-nails.
A tiny drop of blood spurts in one's face as
they are crushed.

We talk of our experiences with the
minenwerfer—the mine-throwing trench
mortars—the other night. Cleary speaks up:

"I thought I was dead a dozen times. When
that sandbag caught me on the head I thought
I was a goner."

I quote: "He who lives more lives than one,
more deaths than one must die."

"What's that?"

"A line from one of Wilde's poems."

He looks at me for a moment in silence.

"Aw, crap."

"Who is this guy, Wilde?" Fry asks.

I start to tell him, but the words sound
hollow and flat here. I stress the scandalous
features of the story and repeat an epigram that
once sounded so sparkling in my high-school
days. Fry closes his eyes and turns his head
away.

I begin to feel down the seam of my trousers
for lice.

*****

To-morrow we are to be relieved. We keep
talking about it all day.

We are going insane with scratching. My
chest is a raw wound. When I am awake I
scratch as little as possible, but when I sleep
I scratch until I bleed and the pain wakes me
up. Yesterday when I crawled into the
dugout after sentry duty, I heard Brown moaning
in his sleep and scratching under his arms.

The sapper who was helping us repair the
trench the other night, said that the Germans
brought the lice with them from Germany.

"They are a filthy rice; the bloody swine,"
he added in a cockney accent.

I suggested that possibly the dirt and the
dead bodies might be the cause. He looked at
me sharply and said:

"I says they're Heinie lice and I knaow.
They got black stripes on their backs, 'aven't
they? In Blighty I never saw a louse with
black stripes on them. They're bloody bosches.
I knaow."

*****

On the way down to the latrine yesterday
I noticed that a shell had torn a hole into one
of the sides of the communication trench.
Some wire stuck out from the hole, some old
cans of unopened bully beef and the toe of
a boot.

It was an officer's boot made of soft brown
leather.

I tugged at it until it gave way a little and
then it came easily.

It was filled with a decaying foot. The
odor was sickening. I dropped it in disgust.

When I came back, Brown limped towards
the latrine. He was gone quite a while; when
he returned he had a pair of soft brown leather
shoes tucked under his arm.

"I found them near the ——house," he
said. "They're dirty, but with a little cleaning
they'll be all right. They're just the right size.
I tried them on."

He sat down beside me and took his shoe
and sock off. "Look at this," he said, showing
me his foot. The back of his heel was as raw
as a lump of meat.

CHAPTER THREE

OUT ON REST

We are out on rest now for the third
time. We are in a little peasant
village; a score or so of neglected,
half-ruined houses and as many barns,
pig-sties, sheds. The officers occupy a deserted
château. My section is quartered in a large
barn with a gaping roof. Successive battalions
have rested here and have used the planks of
the roof as fuel. We continue the tradition.
In the yard outside is a towering manure-pile,
sodden with rich plant-nourishing, steaming
juices which we smell even in our sleep.

Each man has a pile of ancient gray straw
on which he makes his bed. It is so
vermin-infested that if one stands and listens when it
is quiet he can hear the scraping and scurrying
of the pests underneath.

It is late afternoon; we are through with
the day's fatigues and are sitting about digging
off our boots, shining brass buttons,
cleaning and oiling our rifles and killing lice
in-between times.

We have long since learned that the word
rest is another military term meaning
something altogether different. Take artillery,
duel, for example. We are in the line—suddenly
the enemy artillery begins to bombard
us. We cower behind the sandbags, trembling,
white-faced, tight-lipped. Our own guns
reply. They begin to hammer the enemy's
front line. The infantrymen on both sides
suffer, are killed, wounded. This is called an
artillery duel.

We are taken from the trenches and march
for endless hours to billets. The first day out
we really rest. Then begins an interminable
routine of fatigues. We march, drill, shine
buttons, do guard duty, serve as batmen for the
officers, practice grenade-throwing, machine
gunnery, and at night we are taken by lorry
behind the lines to do wiring and trench-digging.
This is called out on rest.

Clark, our captain, does not make life any
too pleasant for us. He is tall and blond and
takes an insufferable pride in his uniform. He
wears very light, smart buckskin riding-breeches
in and out of the trenches. His
leather is brightly polished and his equipment
and insignia gleam malignantly in contrast
with our seedy, mud-stained uniforms.
Yesterday he gave us a stern lecture on
cleanliness and ordered that we must shave every
day. It gives you greater morale, he said.
How can you expect to kill a German when
you feel like dying yourself? he asked. It is
bitter cold, and when we shaved this morning in
the cold water our faces were blue for hours
afterwards.

*****

To-day Brownie came under Clark's
displeasure. Wherever there is a stray bit of
barbed wire Brown is sure to be hooked on to
it. His uniform is almost in tatters. The
stuff is shoddy and comes apart easily. Before
this morning Clark hauled him over the
coals for being a disgrace to the company.
Brownie stood erect and glared. This infuriated
Clark and he ordered Brown's name be
taken for "silent insolence."

Brown is now sitting on his pile of straw
muttering imprecations at his officer.

"I'll kill the bastard—that's what I'll do.
I'm just waiting until we get into a real scrap.
I'll plug the son-of-a-bitch between the
shoulder blades."

We go on with our scraping and polishing.
We are silent in the face of the torrent of oaths
and complaints which stream from Brown.

After a while Broadbent, the lance-corporal,
begins our favorite game. Between the cracking
of lice he says:

"Clean sheets," a voice says from a darkened
corner of the barn. It is Cleary. "Great
big, white, cool sheets and no lice, and I'm
willing to let White Breeches live."

We all agree.

We are filthy, our bodies are the color of
the earth we have been living in these past
months. We are alive with vermin and sit
picking at ourselves like baboons. It is months
since we have been out of our clothes. We
begin to talk of the last time we slept
between sheets. A flood of reminiscences begins.
Brown forgets his hatred for Clark for the
moment and rhapsodizes over his last night
in a real bed.

Brown is a farmer's son. He came from
Prince Edward Island. He is tall, awkward
and continually stumbling into things. He
does not grasp ideas quickly, not even the
simple military ones, and this has made him the
butt for the ridicule of his mates and an object
of hatred for Clark. He is about the same age
as most of us—nineteen or twenty.

He is the only married man in the section.
Two weeks before the battalion left Montreal
a girl whom he knew back home came to the
barracks and they got married. He obtained
permission from the colonel to live outside.
They took a furnished room somewhere and
for two weeks Brown enjoyed complete and
absolute married bliss.

We now know every little detail of that
honeymoon. While waiting to entrain or lying
in dugouts between fatigues, Brown has
gradually pieced together for us the brief few
days of his married life. He starts to tell us
again of his last night with Martha:

"The last night I slept between clean white
sheets was with my wife. Oh, man!"

He smiles in contemplation.

We urge him to tell us more. We know the
story in all its minute variations, but we egg
him on.

It is one of the many ways we can forget the
war for a few moments. The joking is raw,
cruel, and we know it, but continue nevertheless.

We have heard every physical and emotional
foible of Martha's. It seems as though we are
all married to her. We know, as well as Brown
does, that she has a large mole on her right
thigh near her hip; he has told us of all her
reactions to his advances on the marital night.
We enjoy these confidences like the moujik
who, when he could have no vodka, preferred
talking about it.

Anderson, the ex-lay preacher, is with us.
His wish is that the war would end, but this
is against the rules of the game. The wish
must be specific. His is ruled out.

"I wish I was home with Martha," says Brown.

The wishing is resumed. It begins in
earnest when some one wishes for food.

Cleary speaks:

"What's the use of wishing for weeks in bed
with a fat wench. Why, Brownie, you'd cave
in after the first ten minutes. We haven't had
a decent meal for months. I mean a meal.
I'd give everything I own for a big helping of
English roast beef, red inside and tapering off
to a crisp brown outside—big brown baked
potatoes split open on top and sprinkled with
a little paprika—and a great hunk of Yorkshire
pudding. Top that off with a bottle of
cool ale."

He sucks his saliva loudly and closes his
eyes. After a while he adds: "And by roast
beef I mean beef and not horses' meat—it's
gotta be soft, juicy, and red with a little blood
oozing out of it."

"And to think," says Fry, "of all the good
meals I turned down in my life. Many's the
time I passed up a big dish of brown beef
stew with red carrots and yellow turnips
floating in it, just to run out and grab a ham
sandwich in a restaurant. If I ever get out of this,
I'll never refuse a thing my mother sets
before me."

"What's the matter with a ham sandwich?"
Broadbent asks.

"And to think that I once told the old lady
that roast goose was too rich for me and turkey
was too dry. I can see that goose now, stuffed
with apples and chestnuts and little rivers of
fat running down the sides."

It is Broadbent's turn:

"The best meal I ever had was when I got
my five days' leave in London. A tart took
me to a place in Soho. Man, I put it away
until I thought I would bust. You know,
I think that soldiering makes your belly
shrink—"

At this we lapse into silence.

We are hungry.

It is four o'clock and it is a full hour before
we will get our hunk of gray war bread dipped
in bacon grease and a mess-tin full of pale
unsweetened tea.

*****

We have learned who our enemies are—the
lice, some of our officers and Death.

Of the first two we speak continually, the
last we rarely refer to.

Strangely, we never refer to the Germans
as our enemy. In the week-old newspaper
which comes up from the base we read of the
enemy and the Hun, but this is newspaper
talk and we place no stock in it. Instead we
call him Heinie and Fritz. The nearest we
get to unfriendliness is when we call him
"square-head." But our persistent and
ever-present foe is the louse.

We have been sleeping in our clothes now
for months. It is impossible to take them off.
It is winter and the barn is cold. We have
rigged up a stove of sorts made of some piping
and tin which we found near by. We sit
facing the fire and talk in a rambling fashion.
As we talk we hunt for lice.

Fry suddenly appears at the door with a
flat-iron in his hand.

"What's that for?" Broadbent asks.

"The god-damned lice," Fry grunts.

"What are you going to do? Brain 'em?"

"You just watch."

He takes a board and places his tunic on
the board. We watch closely. He heats the
iron over the fire and then runs the hot iron
down the seam. There is a quick series of
cracks. Little spurts of blood come in a stream
from the inside of the seam. Fry looks up
triumphantly.

"That's the way to kill 'em, by God. And
it kills the eggs, too."

We all take our tunics and trousers off and
begin to iron the lice out of our clothes.

"How about the straw?" Anderson asks.
"It's alive."

We see that this will be an endless game.

"Anyway," says Fry, "we'll sleep to-night
for a couple of hours."

Johnson, the sergeant, appears at the door.

"Brown," he says, "orderly room for you."

Brown puts on his tunic and puttees and
we look him over to see that he is properly
dressed for his appearance before the colonel.
He goes out.

In the meantime our food comes around—a
hunk of bread the size of a fist, a piece of
cheese, a raw onion and a mess-tin full of
unsweetened tea.

We are smoking after supper and Brown
reappears.

"What d'yuh get?" we ask.

"Two hours pack drill," he answers and sits
down to eat. We have nothing to say, so we
sit by quietly as he munches his food.

*****

In a field beyond the few houses and barns
which form the village is the parade ground.
It is nearly dark. Out of the twilight heavily-laden
forms emerge. The earth is soft and
soggy. Brown, like the others, is ready for
his pack drill. He is dressed in his greatcoat,
carries full equipment and pack, rifle and one
hundred and twenty rounds of ammunition
in his pouches. Johnson, the sergeant, is in
charge. He inspects each man; there are
about ten.

Fry and I stand near by and watch.

"Squad, ten-shun!"

Twenty heels smack together.

Johnson is not satisfied.

"Now, then, smarter than that! As you were!"

The men relax.

He repeats the order.

Again and again.

Finally he gives the order to march. It is
growing darker.

"On the double."

The men begin to trot. Their equipment
rattles and bangs. The men in the rear begin
to lag.

"Get it right now, youse guys in the rear.
We'll stay here all night if you don't snap
into it."

Around and around they trot, clanging and
banging. The mud is squishy and sticks to
the boots of the trotters.

Fry mutters under his breath. "Come on,
let's go. I can't bear to see it."

The running, grotesque squad passes us.

We hear their panting and wheezing. Even
in the half-dark we can see the red, strained
faces, the wide-opened eyes.

We can stand it no longer: we know the
agony of the jumping pack, the banging of the
entrenching tools on the buttocks, the leaden
ammunition tugging at aching shoulders. We
walk away towards the estaminet.

As we walk we hear Johnson shout: "Come
on, make it snappy," and we hear a slight
acceleration of the clanging of the drillers'
equipment.

"That's the hell of it," says Fry. "Eighteen
days in the line, get the guts shelled out
of yuh—and then all the thanks yuh get is
this—" He jerks his thumb towards the
parade ground.

We enter the estaminet. The warm sour
odor of wine fills our nostrils. Voices, cheered
by wine, call to us. We sit down at a table.
The madame, red-faced, mountainous bosom,
beady eyes, serves us with a bottle of vin rouge.

The heat, the wine, goes to our heads. We
feel that we ought to do something for poor
Brownie, but we cannot think of anything.

This is war; there is so much misery,
heartaches, agony and nothing can be done about
it. Better to sit here and drink the sour, hard
wine and try to forget. The blue haze of
tobacco smoke begins to sway a little.

Better to forget....

But it is not easy to forget. Fry's wine
makes him talkative, moody, bitter. His face
wears an ugly expression of half sneer, half scowl.

"They take everything from us: our lives,
our blood, our hearts; even the few lousy hours
of rest, they take those, too. Our job is to
give, and theirs is to take...."

We order another bottle.

CHAPTER FOUR

BACK TO THE ROUND

Six days in reserve near the light
artillery, six days in supports, six days in
the front trenches—and then out to
rest. Five or six days out on rest and then
back again; six days, six days, rest.

Endlessly in and out. Different sectors,
different names of trenches, different trenches,
but always the same trenches, the same yellow,
infested earth, the same screaming shells, the
same comet-tailed "minnies" with their
splintering roar. The same rats, fat and sleek with
their corpse-filled bellies, the same gleaming
gimlet eyes. The same lice which we carry
with us wherever we go. In and out, in
and out, endlessly, sweating, endlessly,
endlessly.... Somewhere it is summer, but here
are the same trenches. The trees here are
skeletons holding stubs of stark, shell-amputated
arms towards the sky. No flowers grow in this
waste land.

This is our fifth day in the front line, one
more day and out we go back to rest.

For the past few days it has been raining
ceaselessly. We are soaked and chilled.

It is near dawn.

As the smudge of gray appears in the east,
the odors of the trenches rise in a miasmal mist
on all sides of us. The soaked earth here is
nothing but a thin covering for the putrescence
which lies underneath; it smells like a city
garbage dump in mid-August. We are sunk
in that misery which men fall into through
utter hopelessness.

We are in a shallow trench and last night
the enemy trench mortars blew away part of
the parapet, so that now we are exposed to
enfilade fire from our left.

We will have to wait until nightfall to
repair it.

They are sniping at us.

About two hundred yards from us there is
a little wood, and in this wood there are snipers
hidden somewhere among the trees.

The broken parapet does not hide us and
we have to crawl around on our hands and
knees because the sniper can shoot down the
length of our trench.

We remember what the instructor in trench
warfare told us at the base. "Enfilade fire is
fire directed down the length of a line or
trench. It is fire coming from the flanks.
Keep low."

But the instructor is at the base, safe and
comfortable, and we are here in this muddy
trench.

Six short days in a trench!

It is nothing, it seems; less than a week but
it seems like an eternity as we wait for night
when we shall be relieved.

The dugouts here are filled with water and
we live in hastily constructed funk-holes, holes
burrowed into the side of the parapet or
parados. We are wet to the skin.

Why do we crawl about here?

It would be better, it seems, to dash into
No Man's Land and chance death, or down
the communication trench to temporary safety—and
a firing squad. But we are disciplined.
Months of training on the rolling Sussex
downs, at the hase, in the periods of rest, have
stiffened us. We must carry on, carry on....

In a thousand ways this has been drilled
into our heads. The salute, the shining of our
brass buttons, the correct way to twist a puttee
and so on. A thousand thundering orders! A
thousand trivial rules, each with a penalty for
an infraction, has made will-less robots of us
all. All, without exception....

Half a mile from our partly exposed
trench, hidden in the hollow of a tree, sits a
sniper holding an oiled, perfect rifle.

Every night they bring him his rations,
maybe with a little extra schnapps, for I know
our snipers get an extra rum ration.

Sooner or later this German sniper, who
keeps us cowering in cold fear, will be caught
in an advance by our troops.

We will fall upon him and bayonet him like
a hapless trench rat. He will crawl out of his
hiding-place as the first wave swarms about
him menacingly. He will hold his trembling
hands on high and stammer the international
word for compassion and mercy. He will say
that beautiful word comrade, a word born in
suffering and sorrow, but we will stab him
down shouting to one another, "Hey, look, we
found a sniper!" And our faces will harden,
our inflamed eyes will become slits and men
will stab futilely at his prostrate body.

But now they bring him his little extra rations.

His rifle is fitted with telescopic sights so
that we are brought quite close to him. Slowly
he elevates his weapon, looks through the glass
and sees his target as though it is but a few
feet away. Then he pulls the trigger and one
of us drops out of sight.

In our shattered trench we move about
almost doubled over in two, much as a man
does who is suffering with abdominal pains.
Sometimes to get relief we crawl, like babies,
on all fours.

The sniper's rifle cracks and we flop down
groveling in the muddy bottom of the trench.
Minutes pass before we move. No one is
dead and slowly we face each other with gray,
sheepishly smiling faces.

We lie cowering in the bottom of the trench.

There is nothing to do until rations come
up, and we talk in whispers.

It is graying in the east.

The war sleeps.

No guns.

The machine gunners are quiet.

We talk.

"You'd think a guy would like to die living
a life like this," says Fry. "But we flop just
the same."

"How do you know you're gonna get killed
for sure?" says Brown.

Anderson does not speak, he lies with his
cheek glued to the ground. His lips move in
prayer. He gives us the creeps.

"Maybe you'd only go blind or go batty or
something."

"Yeah, that's it. How do you know you're
gonna get killed?"

We all agree that a swift death would be a
pleasant thing. At the crack of the distant
rifle we cower lower in silent fear.

It is dawn now.

Soon a carrier will bring us our rations, and
as soon as it is divided between us and we have
filled our bellies, we will go to sleep and leave
one man on sentry duty.

It is quiet. The guns are quiet. Even the
sniper is quiet. It is half an hour since last his
rifle sent us flopping into the mud.

Over the trench a few sparrows squabble
and chirp with care-free energy. They swoop
down on the sandbagged parapet and sit
looking at us with perky heads cocked to one side.

We look at them in amazement.

They startle us with their noisy merriment,
these foolish birds who may live in peaceful
fields and forests and who come to look for
food on a barren, waste battlefield.

They fly away suddenly towards the German lines.

"They're lost, I guess," Brown says.

The ration carrier crawls round the corner
of the bay of the trench and dumps a hairy
sandbag half-filled with grub on the firing-step.
He says nothing and walks away. He is
tired; he has been carrying food all night.

We take turns in sharing the food among
ourselves. To-day it is Brown's turn.

He spreads his rubber sheet along the firing-step.
He bends low and empties the food into
the sheet; a piece of yellow cheese, three large
Spanish onions, a paper container of
Australian jam labelled strawberry, but made of
figs and artificially flavored with chemicals
which we can taste but do not mind; some tea,
sugar, condensed milk and a great hunk of
gray war bread.

With hungry, grimy fingers he deftly cuts,
slices, divides the food. We look on with
greedy, alert eyes to see that justice is being
done. From time to time he looks nervously
over his shoulder in the direction of the
concealed sniper in the distant woods. Our eyes
follow his. His glance catches mine and he smiles faintly.

"Don't want to die before breakfast, eh?" he says.

I smile and nod and look at the food.

Anderson stands up to get a better view of
the food. He leans over my shoulder.

Broadbent snarls a warning.

We are nervous.

The grub is soon divided into five equal
parts. We each take our share and stuff it
into our haversacks. We will eat it at leisure
in the funk-hole after stand-down. The sun
will soon rise and the immediate danger of an
attack will be over.

Brown shakes the rubber sheet clean of
breadcrumbs and bits of onion skin.

Now he will divide the sugar. Precious
sugar with which we will sweeten the strong,
hot tea that comes up at midnight in large
thermos cans. Tea so bitter that it curls one's
tongue. Strong tea, alive with tannic acid to
soothe frayed, trench-shattered nerves, tea to
still a thumping heart. Sugar to make it
palatable. We watch him in silence.

The rusty spoon for dishing out sugar and
such things is stuck between two sandbags in
the parapet over his head.

Glad to straighten himself up for a second,
Brown stands up to reach for it.

He turns to look in the direction of the
woods to his left.

In that instant his head snaps back viciously
from the impact of the bullet.

The report of the rifle fills our ears like the
sound of a cannon.

He sags to the bottom of the sloppy trench.

His neck is twisted at a foolish, impossible
angle.

Between his eyes, a little over the bridge of
his nose, is a small neat hole. A thin, red
stream runs from it.

No one moves.

On the parados to the rear of us a bit of
slimy gray matter jiggles as it sticks to the
hairy sacking of the sandbag.

At the crack of the sniper's rifle we crouched
lower in the trench and looked with stupid
amazement as Brown's body fell clumsily into
our midst.

We look without resentment towards the
woods. We are animated only by a biting
hunger for safety. Safety...

The sun is rising slowly now, it throws a
pink pearly light on the parados behind us and
colors the motionless bit of Brown's brains.

Everything is quiet.

It is stand-down along the whole front.

The sun warms us a little. We look towards
the east, towards the German lines from
whence came the swift bullet that had thrown
Brown's body awkwardly among us; we look
towards the east where the rising sun now
slowly begins to climb into the heavens...

We pull the heavy, limp body out of the
mud. Its neck is twisted in such a manner
that it seems to be asking a question of us.

We lay it on the firing-step and cover it with
a gray woolen, regulation blanket. The
blanket is short; it hides the head but reaches only
to the ankles. The muddy boots stick out in
V-formation.

The sugar is not yet divided. Some of it is
spilled and dissolved in the bottom of the
trench. Broadbent salvages as much of it as
he can. Dispensing with the spoon he uses his
hands. He scoops the remaining sugar into
four, instead of five parts.

Soon a stretcher-bearer will come and take
the body down to company headquarters.
Broadbent takes the bread and cheese out of
Brown's haversack and shares it with us.

"Anyway," he explains, "he can't eat any more..."

CHAPTER FIVE

ON REST AGAIN

We are relieved. Down the long,
winding communication trenches
and at last out on to the open
field. It is shortly after midnight, and we
straggle past belching light field-artillery and
silhouetted, silent waiting tanks.

He knows that the road is alive with troops
and traffic at this hour. He sprays the road
with overhead shrapnel.

Whiz-z-z-z. Cr-r-r-ung.

A long drawn-out hiss and wail and then a
vicious, snarling explosion overhead. The
dark is stabbed with a burst of red flame. We
duck our heads and hunch our shoulders instinctively.

Instantly there is confusion everywhere.

The drivers yell furiously at the animals. The
chauffeurs grind their gears into high speed.

More red stabs into the blackness over our heads.

They come faster and faster.

The air whines.

One bursts directly over us. The metal balls
rattle on the cobblestones in front of us.

We take to the fields.

But the vehicles must stay on the road. A
lorry gets stuck and blocks the road. Whips
snap like revolver shots over the heads of the
struggling beasts. The horses rear on their
hind legs, their mouths drip white flaky foam.
Their eyes are distended like those of
frightened women. The drivers crack their whips,
calling them foul names. We ask one another
why we must wait here under this fire.

No one knows.

The rain of steel continues.

A horse is wounded.

We hear the beast's shriek above the howl
of the bombardment. It is one of the four
horses drawing a light field-piece. The
wounded animal whirls around, dragging his
mute, pawing mates with him. The team careers
for a moment and crashes into the stalled lorry.

A shell bursts over the lorry.

The driver is hurled from his seat.

He is wounded. His cries mingle with the
piteous shrieking of the wounded horses.

Two animals are now prone and the other
two tear at the harness and kick wildly at the
cannon.

Two stretcher-bearers appear and try to
extricate the lorry-driver, who is being kicked
to death by the frantic horses.

The road is an inferno.

The fire subsides.

We hear the explosions on another road to
our left...

We are ordered to fall in. Four men in our
company are wounded. They are carried away
to the field dressing-station nearby. We begin
our trek towards billets.

We march for hours.

Down dark shell-torn roads, past ruined,
gutted corpses of houses which once sheltered
peaceful peasant families here. We march at
a quick pace even though we are unutterably
tired. Where are we going? we wonder.

We have been marching for two hours. The
stately poplars which line the road here are
less scarred. Here and there we see a
peasant's house which is not destroyed. We see a
faint light showing from behind the tightly
drawn blinds. People live here! Our set faces
relax. We look at one another and smile
wanly.

At last we come to a narrow-gauge railhead.
It is still dark. We are ordered to halt. The
heat of our exhausted bodies loosens the foul
trench odors which cling to us. We throw
ourselves panting onto the softness of a
bordering field.

It is strangely quiet. Only in the distance
do we hear the rumbling of massed artillery
fire. We never escape this ominous thunder.
It is the link which binds us to our future.
Out on rest, miles behind the lines, we hear
it. It is a reminder to us that the line is still
there; that we must return. We lie prostrate,
still....

Near by the tiny narrow-gauge engine puffs
energetically, giving off little clouds of white
feathery steam which float slowly over us. We
look about us with hungry eyes.

Smoke that is not the harbinger of death!

A field which is not the hiding-place of
thousands of men lurking in trenches to tear each
other apart!

The dark, silent, brooding sky above us
which does not pour shrieking, living steel
upon our heads...!

Cleary rolls closer to me, he talks.

"Smell it?"

I nod.

We are lying near a field of blossoming
beans. The air is filled with their heavy
fragrance. We take deep, long inhalations. Our
bodies are cooling and the foul trench odors
cease stirring. We hear the buzzing and
humming of nocturnal insects. Here is life.
Fragrant, peaceful life.... The scent of the
blossoms beats on us in waves, undulating.

I lie on my back. I look at the stars. We
talk quietly as though fearful of disturbing
this restful silence.

"What is it?"

"Beans."

"Beans?"

"Yes, beans; they smell like this when they
are in blossom."

"Jeez, I thought beans..." He makes a
crude joke about beans, an Army joke.

"It's a shame about Brownie."

"Yes."

"Maybe..."

"Yeah, I suppose so—better out of it."

Fry rolls over to where we are lying and
joins in the conversation.

"Private?"

"Naw. Free for all."

"Just sayin' about Brownie."

"Tough."

"Aw, I don't know. Better out of it."

"D'you smell it, Fry?"

"Yes, what is it?"

"Beans."

"I thought beans only—" Again the same
joke. A soldier's joke—a joke born of
bitterness and suffering. A joke to dispel horror.
A joke to make one weep.

"Yeah, they smell like this when they're in blossom."

"It's a shame about Brownie. He'd love
this. Always talking about potatoes and beans
and how he hoed 'em. Remember how he told
that frog farmer how to dig his spuds?"

"Yeah, he came from Prince Edward Island."

"Prince Edward Island potatoes. Used to
see them back home in the markets."

"Well, now he's pushin' them up."

"He sure liked to talk about farming."

"Remember Martha?"

"Gee, I was sorry I kidded him about her."

"It used to get under his skin."

We speak respectfully of Brown now. He
is dead. He is not the awkward, stupid boy
we knew. He is a symbol. He is a dead
farmer. Martha is a widow now because of
his death.

We become silent and lie on our backs
waiting for the order to fall in.

*****

We clamber into the toy-like open cars.
We are jammed tight. We wait for hours, it
seems, until the train begins to start.

Through wide fields, through sleeping little
villages, past dark woods we go. We lean
against the rattling sides. We begin to nod
with the monotonous rocking of the train. On
and on! We know we are going for a long
rest. On and on we go, racing away from
the front, back towards peace, quiet, human
voices.... No shells, no trenches. The
rattling of the wheels take up the thought. No
shells, no trenches, no shells, no trenches....

We wake up.

The train has come to a stop.

It is dawn.

We stumble out of the cars and line up
along the track. We are near a large village.
We are detailed off into sections and marched
away to billets.

The guide for our section takes us to a large
barn. We remove our equipment and fling
ourselves down to sleep.

It is afternoon when we wake. We begin to
look for water and the toilets. We find out
where the cookhouse is. We start to make the
barn more liveable. Rumors are afloat that we
will rest here for two weeks.

One man says that he heard a captain say
to a sergeant that we are out for a month.

Fry has been up for some time. He comes
into the sunlit entrance of the barn full of
information.

"It's pay-day. You can get good cognac
here for five francs a bottle. We're here for
a month. It's a big village. I saw three
good-looking tarts."

He utters the information breathlessly.

We pelt him with questions.

We jump up and begin to dress.

We run with our mess-tins to the cookhouse.

On the way we hear all sorts of rumors
again. As we wait in line before the
field-kitchens we talk.

We line up in alphabetical order before the
paymaster. We present our little brown
pay-books, he makes an entry, and gives us a few
crisp notes. We salute and walk away gleefully.

Pay. Cognac, eggs and chips, wine, sardines,
canned peaches, biscuits. Fry said there
were some good-looking Janes in this town.
It is six o'clock.

Fry meets me and we start off towards the
estaminet together.

"I'm gonna eat until my belly begins to creak."

"Me, too."

We enter the estaminet. The familiar odor
of warm sour wine strikes us. We order six
eggs apiece, a mountain of browned potato
chips, a bottle of wine each. The hefty
madame serves us silently.

We fall to without speaking. We wolf
our food. We swallow glasses of wine. The
room is full of hungry soldiers. We wipe
the yellow bottoms of our plates with
chunks of bread and sit back contented, at last.

The wine has warmed our insides.

Fry shouts to the madame. "Hey, madame,
encore, encore..."

He points to his empty bottle. Two more
bottles are put before us. We drink slowly
now, rolling the sharp wine under our tongues.

We get up after a while. We stagger
slightly. In the corner of the room a crap
game is in progress. We try our luck for
a couple of minutes, and when we have lost ten
francs each we go back to our table. We order
another bottle of wine.

Fry becomes moody. His voice is thick
with wine. I, too, am a little groggy. It is a
fine, forgetful feeling. The fat madame
behind her counter seems more sullen. She
sways a little, it seems. The room is a
bedlam. In the corner where the crap game is
going on the shouts become louder and louder.
Fry puts his hand in his pocket and counts the money.

"Ten francs. C'mon, let's get another
bottle of rouge."

I agree.

We go to the counter and order a quart of
red wine and a bottle of cognac. We take the
bottles and stagger out into the street. Men
are roaring down the street. There is no light
save from the moon. We hear the whirr of an
airplane motor high over our heads. Fry
carries the wine, I the cognac.

I suggest that we take the liquor to the barn
and that we drink it there. We start down the
street towards our billets. Others are walking
in our direction. A pair of girls walk in front
of us. Fry feels gay and shouts the few
French phrases he knows:

"Hey, mam'selle, voulez vous coucher avec
moi ce soir?"

The girls giggle. They are youngsters
about sixteen or so. They still wear their
hair in plaits down their backs. They
do not quicken their paces. That's a good sign.

Encouraged, Fry sings to them. There is
a note of bitterness in his hilarity:

"What the hell would they be wanting with
us?" he says, "with all the damned one-pips[*]
around. C'mon, let's finish the stuff here."

[*] Lieutenants.

We walk on a bit until we reach an open
field. We draw the cork of the bottle of
cognac and take long swigs from it.

In between whiles we tell sentimental stories
of our lives to each other.

Gradually we grow incoherent.

The houses near by begin to spin around.

I lie down in the cool grass....

I feel a jab in my back. I look up. It is
an M.P.

"C'mon, c'mon, back to billets."

I am still groggy. I waken Fry.

We struggle to our feet.

He stares at me stupidly, blinking his eyes
like a rooster. We start off down the road,
back to our billets. Our unsteady heavy
footsteps echo in the silent street.

Over our shoulders we hear the faint
thunder of the line.

*****

The inhabitants of the town are wretched
creatures. Their houses are quartered with
officers and non-coms. We sleep in their
barns. Their men are at the front and many
fields lie fallow. There is a shortage of food
and most of the women and girls are thin,
scraggy objects. The only fleshy person in
the whole place is madame of the estaminet.

It is after drill in the afternoon. Cleary is
sitting beside me oiling his rifle.

"Get any yet?"

"What?"

"Tarts?"

"Scraggy-looking crew," I reply.

"Any port in a storm."

He leans over towards me and tells me the
important secret of the town.

"... so I'm walking down past battalion
headquarters and there's a little French tart, a
little thin but a bit of all right, just the same.
Kind of lively eyes, big like. Voulez vous
coucher, I says, and she oui-oui's me. She
takes me down to her mother's place and we
go into a shed. 'Combien,' I says to her as
we go in. 'Bully bif,' she says. Can you
imagine that—for a tin of bully beef. Man, I'll
bet there'll be a run on the quartermaster's
stores."

Anderson has been listening in. He gives
Cleary a withering look.

"Godless swine, these frogs. No morals.
Small wonder that their country is laid in ruins.

The afternoons are pleasant. We walk in
twos and threes out into the woods. Some
us lie beneath trees smoking, soaking in every
peaceful minute. The food is good and there
is lots of it. We have been here ten days now.
Pay-day is long since past and we have
recovered from our riotous pay-night. There is no
money among us and we smoke the biting
ration cigarettes.

A rumor has it that we are to go in the line
in a few days. A motor-car from divisional
headquarters was parked in front of battalion
headquarters all morning. That is bad.

We enjoy the last few days with all our
might. Soon we will go back in the line
and there are persistent rumors of an offensive.

To the north the cannonading has been
furious the last few nights. Last night the
walls of the barn shook slightly with the force
of the distant bombardment.

The insistent rumble woke me and I walked
out into the open. Up towards Belgium the
sky flashed like the aurora borealis. Our food
has been too good.

We are being fattened for the slaughter.

*****

It is warm and Fry has discovered a little
stream about three kilometers from the village.
We decide to go swimming. About ten of us
set off across the fields. It is late afternoon
and the sun slants down upon us as we shout
and laugh.

We have nearly lost that aged, harassed
look which we wear when we are in the line.
We are youngsters again. Most of us are
under twenty. Anderson is the only matured
man among us. He is forty.

We reach the little river. It is lined with
tall bushes and here we tear off our uniforms.
Broadbent is the first to undress and plunges
into the water with a loud splash, the kind
known to boys as a bellywopper. His body is
fair and lithe.

During the long winter months in the line
bodies did not exist for us. We were men in
uniform; clumsy, bundled, heavy uniforms. It
is amazing now to see that we have slim, hard,
graceful bodies. Our faces are tanned and
weather-beaten and that aged look which the
trench gives us still lingers a bit, but our bodies
are the bodies of boys.

We plunge naked into the clear water,
splashing about and shouting to each other.
Only Anderson does not undress fully. He
wears his heavy gray regulation underwear.
We tease him. He walks gingerly to the
water's edge and pokes a toe into the stream.
Fry creeps up behind him and shoves him
splash into the water. We shout and yell
and come to his rescue, dragging him to the
bank. Broadbent starts to undo his underwear.

Anderson fumes, sputters and strikes out.
His face is red and he shouts deadly threats.
We laugh and leap into the water.

We duck one another and throw water into
each other's faces. A few lads from the village
stand on the bank and look at us in silence.
They have the faces of little old men. We
motion to them to join us but they shake their
heads gravely.

Who can describe the few moments of peace
and sunshine in a soldier's life? The animal
pleasure in feeling the sun on a naked body.
The cool, caressing, lapping water. The
feeling of security, of deep inward happiness....

In the distance the rumble of the guns is
faint but persistent like the subdued throbbing
of violins in a symphony. I am still here, it
says. You may sleep quietly at night in
sweet-smelling hay, you may lie sweating under a
tree after drill and marvel at the fine tracings
on a trembling leaf over your head, but I am
here and you must come back to my howling
madness, to my senseless volcanic fury. I am
the link that binds you to your future, it
mutters.

But the water is cool and inviting and the
afternoon grows older. The stream gurgles
and swishes against the bank on which we
stand. I shake the thought of the guns from
my mind.

About a hundred yards up towards the line
there is a bend in the stream. "Let's race to
the bend and back," Fry shouts. "The last
man back buys the wine to-night."

We dive into the water and start upstream.
Cleary comes to the surface last but turns and
quickly swims towards the bank again.

He stands on the bank and calls us out of
the water in a strange voice. He points to
the water nearby.

We clamber out and crowd near him. We
follow his pointing finger with our eyes.
There is something dark in the water near the
bank.

It is a dead body. It is wearing the
field-blue French uniform. We see the thin red
stripe wriggling up the trouser-leg. An
underwater growth has caught a bit of the
uniform and the body sways to and fro, moved
by the current. In the water it looks bloated
and enormous.

Our day is spoiled by this lonely dead
soldier, carried to us from the front by the
sparkling, sunlit water of the Somme.

We do not say anything to each other. We
dry ourselves on our underwear and start to
dress.

He is different, this Frenchman, from the
hundreds of corpses we have seen in the line.
We thought we were safe. We thought we
could forget the horrors of the line for a brief
few weeks—and here this swollen reminder
drifts from the battlefield to spoil a sunny
afternoon for us....

CHAPTER SIX

BOMBARDMENT

We are back in the line.

This is a noisy front. It is in
constant turmoil. There is no
rest. The enemy rains an endless storm of fire
upon us. At night the wire is hammered by
the artillery and we live in perpetual fear of
raids.

There is talk of an offensive.

Out on rest we behaved like human beings;
here we are merely soldiers. We know what
soldiering means. It means saving your own
skin and getting a bellyful as often as possible
... that and nothing else.

Camaraderie—esprit de corps—good fellowship—these
are words for journalists to use,
not for us. Here in the line they do not exist.

We fight among ourselves.

The morning rations come up. The food
is spread out on the rubber sheet and we start
to divide it among ourselves. Bread, the most
coveted of all the food, is the bone of
contention to-day. Cleary is sharing it out.

Broadbent suspects that his piece is smaller
than the rest.

An oath is spat out.

Cleary replies.

In a moment they are at each other's throats
like hungry, snarling animals.

They strike at each other with their fists,
they kick with their heavy boots. We
intervene, tear them apart and push them into
separate corners of the dugout. Blood streams
from Cleary's cheek. Broadbent is alive with
hate, white with passion.

"You bloody rat."

"Aw, shut up, Broadbent. Leave him be."

"Who's a rat?"

"You."

"Come on, come on, cut it out."

"Any man that'll steal another man's bread..."

They rush at each other again. Again we
pull them apart.

Cleary wipes the blood from his face. He
scowls and holds his hunk of bread in his hands
like an animal. Then slowly he begins to gnaw
at it.

*****

We never become accustomed to the shell-fire.
Its terror for us increases with each
passing day. The days out on rest ease our
harried nerves, but as soon as we are back in
the line again we are as fearful and jumpy
as the newest recruit. With the first hiss and
roar of a shell we become terror-stricken as
of old.

We look at each other with anxious,
frightened faces.

Our lips tighten.

Our eyes open wide.

We do not talk.

What is there to say?

*****

Talk of the coming offensive continues.

The sector becomes more tumultuous.

The guns rage all night.

We "stand-to" long before dawn and wait
at the parapets expecting an attack until long
after sunrise.

The fatigues are innumerable.

Every night there are wiring parties,
sapping parties, carrying parties. We come back
exhausted from these trips. We throw
ourselves down in the dugouts for an hour's sleep.

But we do not rest.

There is no time for rest. We stagger
around like drunken, forsaken men. Life has
become an insane dream.

Sleep, sleep—if only we could sleep.

Our faces become gray. Each face is a
different shade of gray. Some are chalk-colored,
some with a greenish tint, some yellow. But all
of us are pallid with fear and fatigue.

It is three in the morning.

Our section is just back from a wiring party.

The guns are quiet.

Dawn is a short while off....

We sit on the damp floor of the dugout.

We have one candle between us and around
this we sit chewing at the remains of the day's
rations.

Suddenly the bombardment begins.

The shells begin to hammer the trench above.

The candle-light flickers.

We look at each other apprehensively. We
try to talk as though the thing we dread most
is not happening.

The sergeant stumbles down the steps and
warns us to keep our battle equipment on.

The dugout is an old German one; it is
braced by stout wooden beams. We look
anxiously at the ceiling of the hole in which we sit.

The walls of the dugout tremble with each
crashing explosion.

The air outside whistles with the rush of the
oncoming shells.

The German gunners are "feeling" for our front line.

The crashing of the shells comes closer and
closer. Our ears are attuned to the nuances of
a bombardment. We have learned to identify
each sound.

They are landing on the parapet and in the
trench itself now.

We do not think of the poor sentry, a new
arrival, whom we have left on lookout duty.

We crowd closer to the flickering candle.

Upstairs the trench rings with a gigantic
crack as each shell lands. An insane god is
pounding it with Cyclopean fists, madly, incessantly.

We sit like prehistoric men within the ring of
flickering light which the candle casts. We
look at each other silently.

A shell shatters itself to fragments near the
entrance of the dugout.

The candle is snuffed out by the concussion.

We are in complete darkness.

Another shell noses its shrieking way into
the trench near the entrance and explodes.
The dugout is lit by a blinding red flash. Part
of the earthen stairway caves in.

Shell-fire!

In the blackness the rigging and thudding
over our heads sounds more malignant, more
terrible.

We do not speak.

Each of us feels an icy fear gripping at the
heart.

With a shaking hand Cleary strikes a match
to light the candle. The small flame begins to
spread its yellow light. Grotesque, fluttering
shadows creep up the trembling walls.

Another crash directly over our heads!

It is dark again.

Fry speaks querulously:

"Gee, you can't even keep the damned thing lit."

At last the flame sputters and flares up.

Broadbent's face is green.

The bombardment swells, howls, roars.

The force of the detonations cause the light
of the candle to become a steady, rapid flicker.
We look like men seen in an ancient, unsteady
motion picture.

The fury of the bombardment makes me ill
at the stomach.

Broadbent gets up and staggers into a
corner of our underground room.

He retches.

Fry starts a conversation.

We each say a few words trying to keep the
game alive. But we speak in broken sentences.
We leave thoughts unfinished. We can think
of only one thing—will the beams in the
dug-out hold?

We lapse into fearful silences.

We clench our teeth.

It seems as though the fire cannot become
more intense. But it becomes a little more
rapid—then more rapid. The pounding
increases in tempo like a noise in the head of one
who is going under an anaesthetic. Faster.

The explosions seem as though they are
taking place in the dugout itself. The smoke
of the explosives fills the room.

Fry breaks the tension.

"The lousy swine," he says. "Why don't
they come on over, if they're coming?"

We all speak at once. We punctuate our
talk with vile epithets belittling the sexual
habits of the enemy. We seem to get relief in
this fashion.

In that instant a shell hurtles near the
opening over our heads and explodes with a
snarling roar. Clods of earth and pieces of the
wooden supports come slithering down the
stairway.

It is dark again. In the darkness we hear
Anderson speak in his sing-song voice:

"How do you expect to live through this
with all your swearing and taking the Lord's
name in vain?"

For once we do not heap abuse and ribaldry
on his head. We do not answer.

We sit in the darkness, afraid even to light
the candle. It seems as though the enemy
artillerymen have taken a dislike to our candle
and are intent on blowing it out.

I look up the shattered stairway and see a
few stars shining in the sky.

At least we are not buried alive!

The metallic roar continues.

Fry speaks: "If I ever live through this, I'll
never swear again, so help me God."

We do not speak, but we feel that we will
promise anything to be spared the horror of
being buried alive under tons of earth and beams
which shiver over our heads with each explosion.
Bits of earth from the ceiling begin to
fall....

Suddenly, as quickly as it began, the
bombardment stops.

We start to clear up the debris from the
bottom of the stairs.

To think we could propitiate a senseless god
by abstaining from cursing!

What god is there as mighty as the fury of a
bombardment? More terrible than lightning,
more cruel, more calculating than an earthquake!

How will we ever be able to go back to
peaceful ways again and hear pallid preachers
whimper of their puny little gods who can only
torment sinners with sulphur, we, who have
seen a hell that no god, however cruel, would
fashion for his most deadly enemies?

Yes, all of us have prayed during the maniac
frenzy of a bombardment.

Who can live through the terror-laden minutes
of drum-fire and not feel his reason slipping,
his manhood dissolving?

Selfish, fear-stricken prayers—prayers for
safety, prayers for life, prayers for air, for
salvation from the death of being buried
alive....

Back home they are praying, too—praying
for victory—and that means that we must lie
here and rot and tremble for ever....

We clear away the debris and go to the top
of the broken stairs.

It is quiet and cool.

*****

All night long the artillery to our left up
north booms and roars.

A ration carrier comes in with a rumor that
the Germans have broken through up in
Belgium. We are unmoved by this piece of news.
We only speculate how it will affect our
futures. The enemy victory does not fill us
with either fear or hatred. We are tired.

We lie in the dugout talking. Cleary says
that the break-through will cause our
withdrawal from this sector and that we will be
sent to fill the gap up north.

We talk of when the war will end. On
nights when there is little doing this is a good
topic of conversation.

"It'll last for at least twenty years."

"They're making sure about reinforcements.
They give the Waacs[*] ten days' leave and ten
quid for every kid they get."

[*] Women's Army Auxiliary Corps.

"War babies."

"It'll all be over by Christmas."

"Like hell. First they said three months,
then six, then a year. It's two years now and
it's only started."

"It won't be over until every officer has an M.C."

"Why the hell should they want the war to
end? They got lots of damn fools like us who'll
enlist, and when they stop enlisting they'll
drag 'em in."

Anderson speaks up. He is cleaning his rifle
in the corner of the dugout:

"The war will end on August the first,
nineteen seventeen."

"Got it all figured out, eh?"

"No. But the Lord has figured it out for
me. 'And the beast which I saw was like unto
a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a
bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion.' Now
what does that mean?"

"Well, what does it mean?"

"It's all in the Book of Revelation."

"But what does it mean? It sounds like
Greek to me."

"The leopard is France, the bear is Russia
and the lion is England."

"Where's Canada in this deal?"

A sleepy voice from the corner of the dugout
answers:

"Canada is under the lion's tail."

Anderson continues:

"'And I saw one of his heads wounded to
death; and his deadly wound was healed: and
all the world wondered after the beast.' That
was the first year of the war. 'And power
was given unto him to continue forty and two
months.' Now forty-two months is three and
a half years and that means that the war ends
on the first of August next year."

"Yeah, but do the generals know it, that's
what I wanna know."

"Better write 'em a letter about it. They
might forget the date."

Anderson lapses into a martyred silence as
he always does when we jolly him about his
biblical revelations. There is no shell-fire now
and he is not taken seriously.

The conversation drifts, lags and rambles
on until it reaches the ultimate point of all
trench conversations—the discussion of women.

"Well, one night I was with a tart in
London and she says—"

*****

There is a call for volunteers for a brigade
raid. A hundred men are to go over. Some
of our section offer themselves, I among them.

There is a rumor that the volunteers will
receive ten days' leave either in Paris or London.
We stand in the dugout which is battalion
headquarters. We feel quite important. The
colonel is giving us last instructions.

We are to destroy the enemy's trenches and
we are to bring back prisoners. We are to have
a two-minute preliminary bombardment in
order to smash the enemy wire and to keep the
sentries' heads down. We are to rush the
trenches as soon as the fire lifts and drop depth
charges into dugouts. At the end of five
minutes red flares will be lit on our parapets.
This will be the signal that it is time to return
and will show us the direction.

The raid is to take place shortly after midnight.

We are each given a sizeable shot of rum and
sent back to company headquarters.

At midnight we start on the way up to the
front line. We each carry a pocketful of
ammunition, a few Mills grenades and our rifles.
All our letters, paybooks and other means
of identification are left behind.

I have left my papers with Cleary.

The rum has made me care-free and reckless.
I feel fine.

*****

We are lying out in front of our wire, waiting
for the signal to leap up. It is quiet. Now
and then a white Very light sizzles into the air
and illuminates the field as though it were day-time.

We lie perfectly still.

Over in the German lines we hear voices—they
are about fifty yards from where we now lie.

I look at the phosphorescent lights on the
face of my watch.

Two minutes to go.

MacLeod, the officer in charge of the raiding
party, crawls over to where we lie and gives
us a last warning.

"Remember," he whispers, "red flares on our
parapets is the signal to come back...."

In that instant the sky behind us is stabbed
with a thousand flashes of flame.

The earth shakes.

The air hisses, whistles, screams over our heads.

They are firing right into the trenches in
front of us.

Clouds of earth leap into the air.

The barrage lasts a minute and then lifts to
cut off the enemy's front line from his supports.

In that moment we spring up.

We fire as we run.

The enemy has not had time to get back on
his firing-steps. There is no reply to our fire.

We race on.

Fifty yards—forty yards—thirty yards!

My brain is unnaturally cool. I think to
myself: This is a raid, you ought to be excited
and nervous. But I am calm.

Twenty yards!

I can see the neatly-piled sandbags on the
enemy parapets.

Our guns are still thundering behind us.

Suddenly yellow, blinding bursts of flame
shoot up from the ground in front of us.

Above the howl of the artillery I hear a man
scream as he is hit.

Hand grenades!

We race on.

We fire our rifles from the hip as we run.

The grenades cease to bark.

Ten yards!

With a yell we plunge towards the parapets
and jump, bayonets first, into the trench.

Two men are in the bay into which we leap.
Half a dozen of our men fall upon them and
stab them down into a corner.

Very lights soar over the trench, lighting
the scene for us.

We separate, looking for prisoners and dug-outs.

Depth-charges are dropped into the
underground dwellings and hiding-places. The
trench shakes with hollow, subterranean
detonations.

Somewhere nearby a machine-gun comes to
life and sweeps over our heads into No Man's
Land.

The enemy artillery has sacrificed the front
line and is hammering the terrain between their
lines and ours.

Green rockets sail into the black sky. It is
the German call for help.

The whole front wakes up.

Guns bark, yelp, snarl, roar on all sides of us.

I run down the trench looking for prisoners.
Each man is for himself.

I am alone.

I turn the corner of a bay. My bayonet
points forward—on guard.

I proceed cautiously.

Something moves in the corner of the bay.
It is a German. I recognize the pot-shaped
helmet. In that second he twists and reaches
for his revolver.

I lunge forward, aiming at his stomach. It
is a lightning, instinctive movement.

The thrust jerks my body. Something
heavy collides with the point of my weapon.

I become insane.

I want to strike again and again. But I
cannot. My bayonet does not come clear. I
pull, tug, jerk. It does not come out.

I have caught him between his ribs. The
bones grip my blade. I cannot withdraw.

Of a sudden I hear him shriek. It sounds
far-off as though heard in the moment of
waking from a dream.

I have a man at the end of my bayonet, I
say to myself.

His shrieks become louder and louder.

We are facing each other—four feet of space
separates us.

His eyes are distended; they seem all whites,
and look as though they will leap out of their
sockets.

There is froth in the corners of his mouth
which opens and shuts, like that of a fish out of
water.

His hands grasp the barrel of my rifle and
he joins me in the effort to withdraw. I do not
know what to do.

He looks at me piteously.

I put my foot up against his body and try to
kick him off. He shrieks into my face.

He will not come off.

I kick him again and again. No use.

His howling unnerves me. I feel I will go
insane if I stay in this hole much longer...

It is too much for me. Suddenly I drop
the butt of my rifle. He collapses into the
corner of the bay. His hands still grip the
barrel. I start to run down the bay.

A few steps and I turn the corner.

I am in the next bay. I am glad I cannot see
him. I am bewildered.

Out of the roar of the bombardment I think
I hear voices. In a flash I remember that I
am unarmed. My rifle—it stands between me
and death—and it is in the body of him who
lies there trying to pull it out.

I am terrified.

If they come here and find me they will stab
me just as I stabbed him—and maybe in the
ribs, too.

I run back a few paces but I cannot bring
myself to turn the corner of the bay in which
he lies. I hear his calls for help. The other
voices sound nearer.

I am back in the bay.

He is propped up against his parados. The
rifle is in such a position that he cannot move.
His neck is limp and he rolls his head over his
chest until he sees me.

Behind our lines the guns light the sky with
monster dull red flashes. In this flickering
light this German and I enact our tragedy.

I move to seize the butt of my rifle. Once
more we are face to face. He grabs the barrel
with a childish movement which seems to say:
You may not take it, it is mine. I push his
hands away. I pull again.

My tugging and pulling works the blade in
his insides.

Again those horrible shrieks!

I place the butt of the rifle under my arm
and turn away, trying to drag the blade out.
It will not come.

I think: I can get it out if I unfasten the
bayonet from the rifle. But I cannot go
through with the plan, for the blade is in up to
the hilt and the wound which I have been
clumsily mauling is now a gaping hole. I
cannot put my hand there.

Suddenly I remember what I must do.

I turn around and pull my breech-lock back.
The click sounds sharp and clear.

He stops his screaming. He looks at me,
silently now.

He knows what I am going to do.

A white Very light soars over our heads.
His helmet has fallen from his head. I see his
boyish face. He looks like a Saxon; he is fair
and under the light I see white down against
green cheeks.

I pull my trigger. There is a loud report.
The blade at the end of my rifle snaps in two.
He falls into the corner of the bay and rolls
over. He lies still.

I am free.

But I am only free to continue the raid. It
seems as though I have been in this trench for
hours. Where are the red flares? I look
towards our lines and see only the flickering
orange gun-flashes leaping into the black sky.

The air is full of the smoke of high
explosives. Through the murk I see two heads
coming out of the ground. It is an entrance to a
dugout. The heads are covered with the
familiar pot-shaped helmets—we use a more
vulgar term to describe them. Apparently this
was a dugout our men had overlooked.

I cock my breech-lock and raise the rifle to
my shoulder. The first one sees me and throws
his hands high into the air.

"Kamarad—Kamarad," he shouts.

His mate does likewise.

Suddenly the sky over in the direction of
our lines becomes smudged with a red glow.

The flares! The signal to return!

"Come with me," I shout into their ears. I
start to drag them with me. They resist and
hold back.

They stand with their backs glued to the side
of the trench and look at me with big
frightened eyes. They are boys of about seventeen.
Their uniforms are too big for them and their
thin necks poke up out of enormous collars.

I reassure him. I search them for weapons
and then sling my rifle over my shoulder as an
evidence of good faith. We start off down
the trench towards a sap which leads out into
No Man's Land.

We are back in the bay where he with my
bayonet in his ribs lies in the corner. I pass
him quickly as though I do not know him.

The one nearest to me throws himself on the
dead soldier.

I spring upon him.

The red flares color the sky. It is the signal
to return, and here this maniac tries to keep
me in this trench for ever. I grab him by the
slack of his collar and start to tear him away.

He looks up at me with the eyes of a dog
and says:

"Mein Bruder—eine minute—mein Bruder."

The red flares grow brighter in the sky over
my shoulder.

The other prisoner looks at me with sad
eyes and repeats:

"Ja, ja, das ist sein Bruder."

"Schnell," I shout into the kneeling one's
ears. He nods and takes a few letters and
papers from his brother's pockets and follows
me into the sap.

The earth leaps into the air on all sides of us.
I point towards our lines and we begin to run.
The field is being swept by machine-gun fire.

I do not see any of our men. We are alone.

We run and stumble over stray bits of
embedded barbed wire. We pick ourselves up
and run again. It is miraculous how we can
live, even for a moment, in this fire. A shell
explodes about twenty yards from us. The
brother falls. We pick him up and carry him
into a discarded communication trench that
runs from the German lines to ours.

The fire grows fiercer. We can distinguish
shells of every caliber. The air begins to snarl
and bark over our heads. They are using
overhead shrapnel.

We stop and feel in the darkness for a
funk-hole or a dugout. We find a hole in the side
of the trench and wait there while the storm of
living steel rages about us.

It is black inside. The unhurt prisoner pulls
a stub of a candle out of his tunic pocket. I
light it; it flickers with the force of the nearby
detonations.

The brother hugs his wounded leg and rocks
to and fro with pain. We examine him. He
has been hit in the calf of his right leg. We
take the emergency dressings from our tunics
and pour iodine into the open hole of his
flesh. He winces and then shrieks as the
stuff eats into his tissue. I apply a gauze
and his mate starts to bind the wound with bandages.

By signs and with my meager German I
make them understand that we will wait here
until the force of the barrage abates. I pull
out a package of cigarettes and offer them one
each. We light up from the candle and sit
smoking.

I point to the wounded one's leg and ask him
how he feels. He shakes his head and moans:

"Ach, ach, mein Bruder." He points back
towards the German lines.

He begins to weep and talk rapidly at the
same time. I cannot understand. I can
distinguish only two words—"Bruder" and
"Mutter." The other prisoner nods his head
solemnly, affirming what his comrade says:

"Ja, ja, das ist wahr—das ist sein Bruder, Karl."

I sit looking at them silently.

There is nothing to say.

How can I say to this boy that something
took us both, his brother and me, and dumped
us into a lonely, shrieking hole at night—it
armed us with deadly weapons and threw us
against each other.

I imagined that I see the happy face of the
mother when she heard that her two boys were
to be together. She must have written to the
older one, the one that died at the end of my
bayonet, to look after his young brother. Take
care of each other and comfort one another,
she wrote, I am sure.

Who can comfort whom in war? Who can
care for us, we who are set loose at each other
and tear at each other's entrails with silent
gleaming bayonets?

I want to tell these boys what I think, but
the gulf of language separates us.

We sit silently, waiting for the storm of steel
to die down.

The wounded one's cigarette goes out. I
move the candle towards his mouth. He puts
his thin hand to mine to steady it. The
cigarette is lit. He looks into my eyes with that
same doggish look and pats my hand in gratitude.

"Du bist ein guter Soldat," he says, his eyes
filling with tears. I pat his shoulder.

With his hand he describes a circle. The
motion takes in his trenches and ours, the
thundering artillery, the funk-hole, everything. In
a little-boy voice he says:

"Ach, es ist schrecklich—schrecklich...."

*****

The explosions die down.

We decide to move.

I motion to them that we are to go forward.

We crawl out of the dugout.

We support Karl's brother, one on each side of him.

There is no shell-fire here. To the rear they
are shelling our artillery batteries, but here
there is only a steady sweep of machine-gun
fire. As we are in the discarded trench we are
in no danger.

At last we reach the sap that leads to our trenches.

The sentry challenges us and we are allowed
to pass.

Clark is waiting, checking off the names of
those who return. He looks with approval at
the two prisoners.

I am ordered to take the prisoners down to
battalion headquarters.

In the headquarters' dugout there are about
fifty men congregated. I am greeted with
shouts of approval by the officers. It seems
that mine are the only prisoners brought in.

The colonel slaps me on the back.

I ask that the prisoners be treated nicely.

"Of course—of course," says the colonel in
a gruff voice.

They are taken into a corner and given some
food and rum—to warm them up and make
them talk.

One of the men in our company comes up to
me and whispers:

"They're talking of giving you an M.M."[*]

[*] Military Medal.

I watch the noisy scene quite calmly. The
officers and men are flushed with the
freely-flowing rum. The colonel honors me by calling
me to his table and offering me his bottle of
whisky. I take a drink.

I am amazed that I do not tremble and shake
after the experiences of the night.

They are talking of the casualties of the raid.
MacLeod was killed by a grenade as we leaped
into the trenches. Forty men are missing out
of the hundred who went over.

And over there—?

One of the captains in another company
takes the little red and black striped fatigue
cap from the head of the wounded prisoner and
gives it to me.

I refuse to take it.

"Here," he shouts boisterously, "here, take
it and send it home to your mother as a
souvenir."

He stuffs the cap into my pocket.

Outside an occasional shell screams over
our heads and explodes, shaking the dugout.

The terrific noise is gone.

The raid is over.

Forty men—a young officer—two prisoners
and—Karl. I think about this calmly but sadly.

*****

The raiders are excused from duty for the
remainder of the term in the line. We are
sent back to the reserve dugouts. They are
spacious.

The effect of the rum begins to wear off.

I try to sleep.

I cannot.

I am proud of myself. I have been tested
and found not wanting.

I lie on my blanket and think of the raid.
I feel quietly sure of myself. I went through
all that without breaking down.

I feel colder now that the rum no longer acts.

I begin to shiver. I draw my greatcoat over
my head.

I begin to shake.

"Cold," I say to myself, "cold."

My hands shake—my whole body. I am
trembling all over.

"Fool," I say to myself, "fool; why are you
trembling? The raid is over. You are safe.
You will get an M.M.—ten days' leave in
London or Paris."

I try to decide where I shall go, to Paris or
to London, but the thoughts do not stick.

The image of Karl, he who died on my
bayonet, seems to stand before my eyes.

The shaking becomes worse. The
movements are those of one who is palsied.

I begin to sob.

I am alone.

I am living through the excitement of the
raid all over again; but I cannot relieve myself
with action now.

I do not think things now; I feel them.

Who was Karl? Why did I have to kill him?

Forty men lost—why? MacLeod killed—why?

I do not want to lie here. I am frightened
at being alone.

I get to my feet and start up the stairs
leading to the communication trench. An
officer comes stumbling down the stairs.
He recognizes me. He sees my frightened eyes.

"Here, here," he says, "what's the matter?—where
are you going?"

I mumble something.

He offers me his flask. It is filled with rum.
I take a long swig. It burns my insides.

*****

I stumble along the trench looking for my
section. It is quite dark, there are no lights
in the sky. No moon, no stars.

I reach the front line. I recognize faces.
My name is called. It is Fry. He grasps my
hand and shakes it heartily. His face is
serious.

"You did fine, I hear," he says. "They're all
talking about it. You're going to get the M.M."

"Where's Cleary?" I ask.

"He got it," Fry replies.

"Where? How?" I ask.

"Right over here." He points a finger.
"As soon as the barrage started they sent over
a couple of heavies. A hunk of shell caved his
helmet in. He's down at the M.O.'s dugout."

I dash off down the trench. I begin to cry.
Tears stream down my face.

It begins to rain.

The drops fall on my tin helmet, making a
ping-pong noise. The water splashes my face.
It trickles down the gaping collar of my tunic.

The trench becomes muddy and I slip and
flounder in the dark.

The front is quiet. Not a sound rips
through the silence.

I see a lone figure looming out of the
darkness. It is a company runner. I ask where
the medical officer's dugout is. He directs me.
I stagger on.

Odor of chemicals. It is the M.O.'s dugout.
I stumble down the stairs.

Wounded men are lying all over the earthen
floor. The M.O. sees me. He is an elderly
man. He smiles.

"What is it, son?"

"Cleary—Cleary, 'A' company," I stammer.

"Pal?"

I nod my head.

He puts his arm on my shoulder.

"I'm sorry—he won't live."

I stand still. I say nothing.

"Do you want to see him?"

"Yes," I say at last.

He takes me to a corner and points to a
khaki blood-soaked bundle. It is Cleary. His
head lies on a small pile of hairy sandbags.
His chin rests heavily on his collar-bone. His
face is a yellowish green. His eyes are closed.
The eyelids flutter slightly. Over his right eye,
in his forehead, there is a gaping wound out
of which thick red blood flows. Part of the
jaw is ripped off. He is breathing heavily—half
snoring. His face is twisted.

As we talk Cleary gives a loud snort. His
legs and arms convulse and jerk spasmodically.
Then he lies still.

"He's dead."

I explain to the M.O. that there are some
of my papers in the tunic of the corpse. I ask
permission to take them. He nods assent.

I stuff the papers in my pockets and run out
into the slippery trench.

I walk back to the dugouts reserved for the
survivors of the raiding party. I throw myself
down on the blanket. I cannot sleep. I am
calm now. It is quiet. I think:

Why was I so terrified when I thought of
Karl, the prisoner's brother? Why did I stand
frozen as the M.O. told me that Cleary was
dying? Why did tears choke me as I looked at
his oozing wound in his head, at his jaw which
was half torn away?

Why?

The questions press on my brain—cry aloud
for an answer. I toss and turn in my
searching. It does not come.

It is better, I say to myself, not to seek for
answers. It is better to live like an
unreasoning animal.

Ask me no questions—I'll tell you no lies.

At the base a sergeant once told me that all a
soldier needed was a strong back and a weak
mind.

Better not to ask questions. Better not to...

Well ... Cleary is dead. Dead with a hole
in his head ... with his jaw shot away....

Maybe he was better off. No more war for
him—no more fatigues—no more Clark....

But why did you feel as though your insides
were being forced up through your throat as
you saw him die? I say to myself.

No answer.

I had seen other men die. Hundreds,
thousands, maybe....

He was a clerk in an office back home.
Maybe if he hadn't died here—like this—he
would have married a stenographer in the office
in which he worked. He would have had
children and maybe he would have been run over
by a taxicab.

Or maybe he would have contracted a venereal
disease in a Cadieux Street dive and died
of paresis. Maybe.

And Karl...?

Maybe he was a farmer or a mechanic. Who
knows?—he could have died in a hundred ways
in civilian life.

What is so terrible about the death of one of
these boys—about the death of one of us?

I guess it is because we do not want to die—because
we hang on so pitifully to life as it slips
away. Our lives are stolen—taken from us
unawares.

Back home our lives were more or less our
own—more or less, there we were factors in
what we were doing. But here we are no more
factors than was the stripling Isaac whom the
hoary, senile Abraham led to the sacrificial
block....

But it is better not to think....

I pull my coat over my head. I feel warm
and drowsy.

At last sleep comes, mercifully....

CHAPTER SEVEN

BÉTHUNE

Béthune.

A dirty, squat, coal-smudged city.

The black North of France. In the
days of peace black with the soot of coal, now
blackened with the smoke of war.

On the outskirts of the town is a huge
slag-heap. The adjacent coal mine is idle—but
intact. The city is within range of heavy
artillery fire. The countryside around the city is
pock-marked with shells. But the mine stands
intact. It is a miracle.

Béthune. A few miles behind the Canadian
front! A haven of rest for the Canadians—tired
and trench-weary.

Béthune with its narrow, grimy streets. Its
undersized mining population which walks
down the streets with that peculiar stunted
walk of human moles. Wine shops, stores,
egg and chip joints!

No shells scream into the town.

Aeroplanes fly harmlessly over it.

The mine building with its shower-baths!

The tolerated brothel!

Yes, Béthune is a haven—a soldiers' haven.

*****

We march towards the city singing our
smutty marching songs. Songs laden with
humor—gallows-humor, the Germans call it.
There is something terrifying in the eagerness
with which we sing these songs.

A song to forget the horror of the trenches!

A song to forget our dead!

A song to forget the unforgettable!

Our bellies are full. We have rested for a
night. It is late afternoon and now we are
marching towards Béthune with its wine shops,
gambling dives, its safe streets—its bordels.

Let the thunder of the artillery boom behind
us. We are marching away from it.

Seven hundred men, hard, tough, and war-bitten.

Our feet beat the rhythm for the songs.

Oh, madam, have you a daughter fine, parley voo.
Oh, madam, have you a daughter fine, parley voo.
Oh, madam, have you a daughter fine,
Fit for a soldier up the line,
Hincky, dincky, parley voo.

And then the answer:

Oh, yes, I have a daughter fine,
Fit for a soldier up the line,
Hincky, dincky, parley voo.

Mile after mile the verses are roared out
with a half-terrified, half-Rabelaisian
boisterousness.

Then the concluding verses.

So the little black bastard he grew and he grew, parley voo.
The little black bastard he grew and he grew, parley voo.
The little black bastard he grew and he grew,
And he learned to love the ladies too,
Hincky, dincky, parley voo.

And a word for the generals:

Oh, the generals have a bloody good time
Fifty miles behind the line.
Hincky, dincky, parley voo.

Left, right, left, right, roar the dirty
marching songs:

Oh, wash me in the water
That you washed your dirty daughter.
And I shall be whiter
Than the whitewash on the wall....

Left, right, left—roar the dirty marching
songs.

To-morrow we may be dead. The world is
shot to pieces. Nothing matters. There are
no ten commandments. Let 'er go!

*****

Anderson complains to the chaplain of the
battalion.

"Suppose we were bombed or something.
Imagine them going to meet their God with a
dirty marching song on their lips!"

But we continue to sing our songs—shouting
and singing down the terror that grips each
heart:

Behind him stands a group of young aides.
They languidly survey us as we stand at the
salute.

The general starts to walk down the ranks.
He is followed by his staff.

We are standing as rigid as though ramrods
were shoved up our spines.

We are motionless.

A louse comes to life in one of my armpits.
The itch is unbearable. I want to drop my
rifle and scratch. I try not to think of it, but
the biting of the beast is an inescapable fact.
Mind over matter does not work here. To
move would mean the orderly room and a few
days' loss of pay. I stand still.

The inspection takes but a few minutes.
The general gets into his car and drives off.

We are marched back to our billets. On the
way back we talk:

"... a little runt, ain't he?"

"Got a cushy job, too."

"Bet he's got a hundred batmen to shine his
leather."

"He's got fifty medals..."

"Yeah, but he'll never die in a lousy trench
like Brownie and them did."

"God, no. Generals die in bed."

"Well, that's a pretty good place to die."

Anderson speaks up:

"Where would we be without generals—"

"Yeah—where?"

Clark shouts an order:

"March at ease!"

That means we may sing:

Oh, the generals have a bloody good time
Fifty miles behind the line.
Hincky, dincky, parley voo.

*****

We are marched over for our quarterly bath.
There are shower-baths in the mine buildings.
It is three months since we have been under hot
water. Now we will bathe our lousy, scratched
bodies.

But even here water is scarce. We strip
and stand waiting for the water to be turned
on. Fifteen seconds under the steaming water
and then out. We soap ourselves, covering
our bodies with a thick lather. Fifteen seconds
under the water again for rinsing.

We go naked into another room for our
fumigated underwear. In the seams and
crotches of the fresh underclothing we see
lurking pale lice as large as rice grains.

*****

It is dusk on pay day.

In the center of the town, in a red-brick
house, is the brothel. The house has six girls
on duty all of the time—three for the privates
and three for the officers. The officers have a
private entrance. But inside, it is said, the
girls do not recognize this distinction of
military rank.

There are no lights in the town. In the
dusk the queue extends for two streets. Three
hundred men stand waiting.

The children of the town pass the line
silently. Women and their men pass by.

The boys in line joke:

"Hell, you gotta wait in line for everything
in war."

The younger soldiers grumble impatiently at
the delay, but older ones wait stolidly.

As the night grows darker the queue becomes
a long silent line of avid men who stare
hungrily at the brightly-lit door of the house
as it opens every now and then and emits a
khaki-clad figure which hurries off into the
dark.

The line moves up one pace....

*****

There are no fatigues for a few days. I
walk down the roads at night. It is good to
get away from the company for a few hours.
Sometimes I sit in a civilian estaminet and
drink wine and listen to the natives talking. It
sounds pleasant to hear words which one does
not comprehend. In these native estaminets
the price of wine is cheaper than in the ones
frequented by the soldiers. The French here
think that every Canadian soldier is a
millionaire. They do not understand why we throw
our money away so freely.

It is early evening. The sun has set. The
men are sleeping after supper or sitting in the
wet canteens, drinking beer. I fill a large
pouch with tobacco which has been sent to me
from home. I stuff the bowl of my pipe and
light up, and set off down one of the roads
which lead away from the town.

I walk along puffing at my pipe. Nearby I
hear the sound of fowl clucking as they are
disturbed in their sleep. A pig grunts
somewhere in the twilight.

I pass a peasant cottage. An old man sits
at the door. He greets me. I stop. He
speaks a little English. We talk.

He sniffs hungrily at the smoke which curls
from the bowl of my pipe. Tobacco is scarce
with the natives. There is a government
monopoly, and most of it is sent to the French
soldiers at the front. The natives smoke
horrible black stuff, expensive and hard to get.

He holds out a gnarled, brown hand. It is
twisted into the pathetic begging gesture.

"Tabac?" he asks.

I hesitate. One is not generous in war.

His eyes beseech me. I give him my pouch.
He takes a blackened pipe from his pocket and
eagerly fills his bowl.

We smoke in silence.

He takes a deep inhalation of the fragrant
Virginia tobacco and exhales with deep sighs
of satisfaction.

After a while we talk again.

He asks if I like Béthune.

"Yes," I say. "They don't shell it, do they?"

"Do you know, m'sieu, why the Boches do
not bombard the city? It is a fortified town.
You must surely know?"

I ask why.

"That mine there"—he points towards the
slag-heap which towers over the fields—"it is
owned"—he lowers his voice for no apparent
reason—"it is owned by the Germans—so they
do not shell it. But my barn here"—he points
to a demolished wood barn—"it was shelled
last month. Cr-r-r-ung! and a year's work
was done in. Their own coal-mines they will
not destroy, but—"

He breaks off.

"It is better not to talk of such things, eh,
m'sieu? It is even better not to think of them?"

He asks me into the house.

Inside we sit and talk. He gives me a glass
of white table wine and I offer him half a franc.
He takes it.

Presently a girl of about eighteen or so
comes into the house. Apparently she has been
doing some light chores. She smiles at me.
She is dark, like so many of these northerners
and has olive, ruddy cheeks. Her hair is
shiny black. As she smiles her eyes wrinkle
up and seem to disappear behind her high
cheekbones; at the same time the bridge
of her nose creases, giving her a tomboyish air.

I ask if they have a spare bed. I do not
relish the idea of sleeping in billets to-night.
I offer to pay. Her father consents.

I undo my puttees and make myself comfortable.
I fill my pipe and sit near the door
smoking and talking to the girl. Presently she
goes into the corner of the room and talks with
her father. I hear them whispering.

I sit and look over the silhouette of the
slag-heap in the direction of the line. The rumble
of the artillery fills the air and the gun-flashes
color the early night sky. It is nice to sit here
and watch it....

A hand is on my shoulder. It is the girl.

"You please give fader tabac? Canadien
have many."

The skin on her nose creases again and her
eyes twinkle. She runs her hand up the back
of my head.

I cannot refuse her. I give her half the
contents of my pouch. She runs to her father
with the treasure. He nods to me gratefully
from his corner.

I continue to sit and think, watching the
flashes in the distant sky.

It grows darker and darker.

It is black.

The lights disappear altogether from the sky.

The rumble ceases.

The night's bombardment is over.

I knock the ashes from my bowl.

The old man is standing beside me.

"Come," he says, "I will show you where to sleep."

He leads me up a narrow stairway and down
a little hall. The house is dark and quiet.
No lights are permitted.

He opens a door. It is black inside the room.

"You sleep here," he says.

I walk in. He closes the door.

I fumble in the dark and find a chair. I
start to undress. I am tired and the thought
of a night in a bed hastens my movements.
At last I am undressed. I feel in the darkness
for the bed.

I throw myself on to it.

In the dark my hand feels a warm, hard
woman's body. I smell peasant odors—earth,
manure, sweat.... Her hot breath beats into
my face. We do not speak....

*****

In the morning I sleep late. I dress in a
hurry and get into billets late for breakfast.
Fry and Broadbent tell me that I am wanted
at company headquarters.

My leave has come through!

I rush back to my billets. I hastily pack
and get ready to go. I draw my pay. In the
evening I start down the line.

There are about twenty-five of us in the
cattle-car which halts and bumps its way down
towards the base. The train creaks and comes
to a halt every few miles. It is night but we
cannot sleep. We talk and smoke.

"I'm gonna walk into the best restaurant
in London and I'm gonna say to the waiter,
'Bring me everything on the menu.'"

"Yeah, you think you can eat a lot. Well,
let me tell you that your belly is all shrunk up.
Last time I was on leave I got sick that way."

"I'm gonna sleep the whole ten days."

"God, another day and we'll be sleeping in
clean sheets...."

*****

Dawn.

We are still in the cattle-car. We pass an
encampment for war prisoners. The emaciated
looking Germans stand looking, as silent
and motionless as owls. One of them waves his
hand at us as we ride past. We wave back
at them. We throw them cigarettes and cans
of bully beef.

At last we arrive at the base. We wait in
line for our soup and later are assigned to
motor lorries which will take us to the
Channel port.

CHAPTER EIGHT

LONDON

London.

It is three o'clock in the morning.

We are weary with the long hours
of travel. I walk out of the soot-colored ugly
Waterloo Station and hail a cab. I give the
driver the name of a little hotel.

I am taken up to a room. I ask where the
bathroom is. In a few minutes I am scrubbing
myself vigorously.

It is five o'clock when I turn in. I stretch
myself royally between the cool white sheets.
Outside I hear the rumble of early morning
traffic. I listen hungrily.

The hollow, echoing sound of horses'
hoof-beats. The roll of wheels on the macadam.
The growl of an omnibus as it passes my window.

I snuggle contentedly under the sheets and
fall asleep.

*****

It is late afternoon when I awake.

I dress leisurely, soaking in each quiet
moment. The room is peaceful. It is years since
I have been alone like this. I polish my boots,
shine my buttons and leave the hotel.

On the steps I light a cigarette and look
around me. Nobody notices me. The traffic
of the city flows on all sides of me.

It is dusk and the few lights permitted are
shaded so as not to be visible from the air.
I walk to the corner. A woman passes me
and whispers:

"Hello, Canada."

Too early for that.

First I must get a drink and then a bellyful
of food.

I walk into a restaurant on Shaftesbury
Avenue. I order a meal and a bottle of wine.
After the first few mouthfuls I notice that I
am not very hungry. That man on the leave
train was right. I drink a glass of wine and
light a cigarette.

Well, I am happy, anyhow.

The waiter sees the insignia on my shoulders.
He is a tall, pale cockney. He hovers
over me.

"'Ow is it over there?"

I do not feel like talking.

"Lousy," I reply.

A pretty girl sits opposite me. She leans
across the table and asks for a match.

I give her a light.

We walk out of the restaurant together.

Her name is Gladys. We walk along the
streets talking and laughing. She is an
excellent companion for a soldier on leave. She
does not mention the war.

We are in the Strand near Fleet Street.

"Let's have a drink," she says.

"Sure."

"Don't say 'sure,'" she says, "it sounds
American. Say 'of course.'"

"But I am an American."

"I don't like Americans."

"All right, then I'm a Canadian."

We walk into the family entrance to a pub
and order two doubleheaders of Scotch. We
sit and drink and talk.

"Where shall we go to-night?"

"Anywhere you say."

"Do you want to go to the Hippodrome?"

"Yes."

We order another drink. I feel flushed.

We walk out of the public-house and into
the humming streets.

She puts her arm in mine and we walk up
the street. Her body is close to mine. I feel
its contours, its firmness. There is an odor of
perfume.

"Love me?"

She looks at me with wide-open eyes.

"Yes. I love all the boys." She squeezes
my arm. I do not like her answer.

I frown.

She hastens to explain:

"I have enough for you all, poor lads."

My frown breaks a little.

"Now, then, let's not talk of things like
that," she says.

The whisky is racing through my veins. I
feel boisterous. I swagger. The thought of
the trenches does not intrude itself now.

I buy the tickets for the theater. Inside the
performance has started.

On the stage a vulgar-faced comic is
prancing up and down the apron of the stage
singing. Behind him about fifty girls dressed in
gauzy khaki stage uniforms, who look like
lewd female Tommies, dance to the tune of the
music. Their breasts bob up and down as they
dance and sing:

Oh, it's a lovely war.
What do we care for eggs and ham
When we have plum and apple jam?
Quick march, right turn.
What do we do with the money we earn?
Oh, oh, oh, it's a lovely war.

The tempo is quick, the orchestra crashes,
the trombones slide, the comic pulls impossible
faces.

The audience shrieks with laughter. Gladys
laughs until tears roll down her face.

The chorus marches into the wings. A
Union Jack comes down at the back of the
stage. The audience applauds and cheers.

I feel miserable.

The fat comic—the half undressed actresses—somehow
make me think of the line. I look
about me. There are very few men on leave
in the theater. The place is full of smooth-faced
civilians. I feel they have no right to
laugh at jokes about the war.

I hear Gladys' voice.

"Don't you like it, boy?"

"No, these people have no right to laugh."

"But, silly, they are trying to forget."

"They have no business to forget. They
should be made to remember."

The comic on the stage has cracked a joke.
The audience goes into spasms of laughter.
My voice is drowned out.

Gladys pats my arm.

A jolly-faced rotund civilian in evening
dress sitting near me says:

"I say, he's funny, isn't he?"

I stare at him.

He turns to his female companion. I hear
him whisper:

"Shell-shocked."

I cannot formulate my hatred of these
people. My head is fuzzy but I feel that people
should not be sitting laughing at jokes about
plum and apple jam when boys are dying out
in France. They sit here in stiff shirts, their
faces and jowls are smooth with daily shaving
and dainty cosmetics, their bellies are full, and
out there we are being eaten by lice, we are
sitting trembling in shivering dugouts....

Intermission.

I feel blue. The effect of the Scotch has
worn off.

"Come on, let's have a drink," Gladys says.

We go to the back of the auditorium and
order two drinks. It is a long wait and we
have several drinks before the curtain goes
up again.

Finally the show ends and we go out into
the street.

Swarms of well-dressed men and women
stand about in the lobby smoking and talking,
waiting for their motor-cars. There are many
uniforms but they are not uniforms of the
line. I see the insignia of the non-combatant
units—Ordnance Corps, Army Service Corps,
Paymasters. I feel out of place in all this
glitter.

"Come on," I say to Gladys, "let's get out
of here."

She is angry with me as we walk down the street.

"You're spoiling your leave. Can't you forget
the front for the few days you have before you?"

We are back in the pub.

More drinks.

She tells me amusing little bits of her life
and I listen.

"... so when he left me I decided I'd stay
on in London. I didn't know what to do so
I took rooms in Baker Street and made a
living that way. But I'm not like other
girls...."

So!

*****

Inside of her room a fire burns in the grate.

It is warm and cheery.

She takes off her hat and gloves, and
prepares to make tea. The room is furnished
with the taste of a woman of her profession.
Ah, but it is welcome after two years in the
line! I sit on a dainty settee facing the fire.

She comes back with tea and a small bottle
of rum.

"Shall I lace it for you?"

I nod. She pours a little rum into the hot
tea. We sit back and drink. She nestles up
against me and with her free hand she takes
off her shoes, then she slips off a stocking. As
we talk she slowly undresses. Finally she
stands up in only a gauzy slip.

The rum is tingling in every nerve. The
fire throws a red glow over her white skin.

She sits on my lap and then jumps up.

"My, but your uniform is rough."

I take a roll of pound notes out of my
pocket. I put them on the table close at hand.

"Listen," I say. "I like you. Let me stay
here for my ten days."

"I was going to say that to you, but I was
afraid you might misunderstand me. Most of
my boys spend their whole leave with me. I
don't like them running off in the morning.
It's a little insulting—" She ends with a little
laugh.

The fire crackles on the hearth. The rum
sings in my head. The heat of the fire beats
on my face. Her slim white body entices me.

Bang! An explosion in the street.

I leap to my feet.

My heart thumps.

She laughs.

"Silly. That's only a motorcycle backfiring.
You poor thing! Your face is white."

She puts her hands on my face and looks
anxiously at me.

I try to laugh.

*****

We lie in bed. From a neighboring clock
the hour strikes. It is three o'clock.

One day gone!

Gladys' head lies in the crook of my arm.

"Happy?"

Her body makes a friendly, conscious movement.
It is one of the many ways that lovers
speak without words.

"Yes," I say in a whisper.

A tear comes to life and rolls down my face.
She puts her hands to my eyes and wipes them.

"Then what are you crying about?"

I do not answer.

"You won't be cross if I tell you something?"

I shake my head.

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"I always feel sad when the boys cry in my
bed. It makes me feel that it is my fault in
some way."

Silence. Then:

"You're not angry because I have
mentioned the other ones?"

I shake my head.

Cool hands on my face.

Her silken hair brushes against my cheek.

"Now, now—go to sleep, boy."

The clock booms the quarter-hour. I close
my eyes.

*****

I wake with the odor of grilled bacon in
my nostrils. The curtains in the room are
drawn. I do not know what time it is but I
am rested. Rested and famished. In another
room I hear the sizzling sound of cooking.

Gladys comes into the room. She is dressed
in a calico house-dress. She smiles at me and
says:

"Tea?"

She brings a cup of tea to me and we talk of
the plans for the day.

I dress and come into the other room which
is a combination dining and sitting-room and
parlor.

There is a glorious breakfast on the table,
grilled bacon, crisp and brown, two fried
eggs, a pot of marmalade, a mound of toast,
golden yellow and brown, and tea. I fall to.

Gladys looks on approvingly. How well
this woman understands what a lonely soldier
on leave requires.

"Eat, boy," she says.

She does not call me by name but uses
"boy" instead. I like it. In a dozen different
ways she makes me happy: a pat on the arm,
a run of her hand through my hair.

She is that delightful combination of wife,
mother and courtesan—and I, a common
soldier on leave, have her!

I slip into my tunic which by some mystery
is now cleaned and pressed, and we go out into
the street and walk towards the Park.

*****

The days slip by.

It is a week since I have been here with Gladys.

We are at table. She is a capable cook, and
delights in showing me that her domestic
virtues are as great as her amorous ones. I do
not gainsay either.

We are drinking tea and discussing the plans
for the evening. I do not like a moment to
slip by without doing something. I am
restlessly happy.

"I should like to go to Whitechapel this
evening," I say.

She looks at me with surprise.

"Why?"

"I've heard so much about it. I want to see it."

"It's not nice there."

"I know, but I want to see more of London
than just its music-halls, Hyde Park and its
very wonderful pubs."

"But very low people live there, criminals
and such things—you will be robbed."

"Well, I don't mind. I am a criminal. Did
I ever tell you that I committed murder?"

She looks up with a jerk. Her eyes look
at me with suspicion.

"It was some time ago. I came into a place
where an enemy of mine was and I stabbed him
and ran off," I explain.

Her eyes are wide open. She is horrified.
She does not speak.

I laugh and relate that the murder took
place in a trench and that my enemy wore a
pot-shaped helmet.

Her face glows with a smile.

"You silly boy. I thought you had really
murdered some one."

*****

Westminster Abbey.

Brown—musty—royal sepulchre.

I am alone.

I walk past statues of dead kings.

I yawn.

As I walk out in the bright sun-lit street
I heave a sigh of relief. Well, I have been to
Westminster Abbey. It is a duty.

As I come out, an Anglican curate sees my
listless face.

It is wartime and no introductions are necessary.

"Hello."

"Hello."

"You look tired."

"Yes."

"On leave?"

"Yes. Going back to-morrow."

"Itching to get back, I'll wager."

"I'll be itching after I get back."

He laughs. He is the type known as a
fighting parson—very athletic and boisterous.

"Ha, ha, that is a good one—you'll be
itching after you get back. I must remember that
one."

He asks if I will have tea with him at a
near-by tea-room. The mustiness of the
Abbey has dulled my wits and I can think of no
ready excuse, so I accept.

We are seated at the table. He asks me
innumerable questions about the war.

Isn't the spirit of the men simply splendid?
Sobered every one up. West End nuts who
never took a single thing seriously leading
their men into machine-gun fire armed only
with walking-sticks.

I remark that this is bad military procedure
and add that it sounds like a newspaper story.

"Absolutely authentic, dear boy; a friend
of mine came back and told me he saw it with
his own eyes. Here, have a cigarette." I take
one. I sit and smoke and listen to his views
on the war. I am ill at ease and want to get
back to Gladys.

He talks on.

"... but the best thing about the war, to
my way of thinking, is that it has brought out
the most heroic qualities in the common
people, positively noble qualities...."

He goes on and on.

I feel that it would be useless to tell him of
Brownie, of how Karl died, of the snarling
fighting among our own men over a crust of
bread....

I offer to pay for the tea. He protests.

"No, no, by Jove, nothing too good for a
soldier on leave—this is mine."

We part at the corner of the street.

"Good-by."

"Good-by, good luck, and God bless you, old man."

I hurry back to Gladys. To-night is our last
night together.

*****

Morning.

The last day.

I am to leave Waterloo station at noon. I
have slept late. Gladys and I eat breakfast
in silence. She is sad that I must go, of that
there is no doubt. As I pack my things she
brings a parcel to me which contains food, a
bottle of whisky and cigarettes. I kiss her
lightly as a gesture of thanks; she clings to
me and hides her face from me.

Well, these things come to an end sooner
or later....

We are at the station. The waiting-room is
crowded with soldiers coming to London on
leave. I envy them.

I say good-by to Gladys. She puts her
arms around me. I feel her body being jerked
by sobs. I kiss her passionately. She is all
the things I have longed for in the long months
in the trenches—and now I must go.

Her eyes are red and wet with tears. Her
nose is red.

She looks up to me pathetically with weepy eyes.

"Have you been happy, boy?"

I think of the beautiful hours we have spent
together and I nod.

Crowds mill on both sides of us. We are jostled.

I do not know how to go. I decide to be abrupt.

"Well, I think I'll have to be going."

Once more we embrace. She holds me
tightly. I feel tears springing to my eyes. I
lift her face to mine and kiss her wet eyes.

I run through the gate.

I look back.

She waves a crumpled handkerchief at me.

I wave my hand.

I climb into the carriage.

The train begins to move....

CHAPTER NINE

OVER THE TOP

Back at the front.

I find the battalion a few miles
behind the reserve lines. They have
just had a short rest. We are getting ready to
move. There is intense excitement everywhere
and of course innumerable rumors. We
are going to the south of France, to a quiet
front for a real rest—we are going north to
Belgium—there is to be a terrific offensive,
we are to be shock troops—and so on. The
air is thick with these rumors—latrine rumors
we call them.

A batch of unused recruits have come up,
which gives us reason to believe that we are
not going out on rest. The recruits look with
amazement at the feverish preparations, they
get in our way, ask foolish questions and make
nuisances of themselves generally.

The artillery-roar up front swells as night falls.

It is dark when the battalion is ready. We
fall in outside of our billets and march out of
the little deserted, shell-torn village.

We march all night. Ten minutes' rest
every hour. The road is jammed with clanging
artillery. There is a steady stream going
our way.

Yes, we are going into action; of that there
can be no doubt. The rumors of an offensive
these past months have not been idle ones.

It is autumn. We are wearing our greatcoats
and the hours of marching leave us wet
with sweat. We cease talking among
ourselves. Breath is valuable. The packs tug at
our shoulders. The accouterments bang and
clank against each other.

Men begin to fall out of the ranks.

The road becomes rougher. Shell-holes
everywhere. Gaps in the marching column
grow wider. Clark runs up and down his
company shouting orders.

"Close up those god-damned gaps."

We run, painfully breaking the rhythm of
the march.

It is dark. Up ahead of us we see white
lights shooting above the horizon. Very
lights! We are getting nearer to the line.

We pass through a charred, ruined village.
Guns come to life on both sides of the road.
Heavy artillery. From behind skeletons of
houses the mouths of the guns shoot tongues
of red flame into the night. The detonations
startle us with their suddenness. We march on.

Renaud, an undersized French-Canadian recruit,
marches by my side. He came up on
the train with me when I returned from leave
and has attached himself to me. He complains
that he has a pain in his side. It is a
miracle how he can stagger along under his
load. I do not know how he ever passed the
doctor.

His knees sag. In the dark I see his pale
face, it is twisted with pain.

"It hurts me here," he says, putting his hand
to his left side near the groin.

"If it gets worse, fall out," I say.

It is long after midnight. We have been
marching for nearly six hours. We lie
alongside the road for our ten-minute rest.

Up ahead of us a bombardment is going on.
A road is being shelled with overhead shrapnel.
We see the red bursts in the air. We do
not speak to each other.

Renaud whimpers.

"I cannot go on. I have a pain here."

Clark passes us as we rest.

"I will have to fall out, sir," the recruit says.

Clark turns on him with a cold smile.

"Cold feet, eh," he says, and he walks on.

It is time to fall in. Renaud cannot get to
his feet. Clark walks over to him.

"Fall in there, you," he orders.

The recruit begins to cry. The company
is drawn up, waiting. Renaud does not move.
He lies by the edge of the road with his hand
pressed to his side. Clark stands over the
prostrate recruit.

"Get up!"

The recruit does not move. The officer
takes him by the scruff of the neck and hauls
him to his feet.

"You yellow-livered little bastard. Fall in."

Renaud hobbles to his place. We begin our
march....

*****

All night long the guns blaze and storm.
We sit in the damp dugouts and wait for the
order to move forward. The recruits are
frightened. They sit among themselves and
talk in whispers.

We have been told that we are going over
the top in a few days. There are no fatigues.
We wait and sleep.

I am lying in a corner half-asleep on a pile
of sandbags. I feel some one tugging at my
left breast-pocket. I push the intruder away
with a sleepy movement of my hand. I doze
again. Once more he tugs. I wake up fully.

It is a rat gnawing at my pocket in which
I have some biscuits. I sit up and it retreats
a little. I look at it and it bares its teeth.
I reach for my rifle. It dashes into a hole.

*****

In the front line.

It is midnight.

We are to go over at five.

It is jet-black.

The enemy is nervous to-night.

He keeps hammering at our line with heavy
artillery.

The rum comes up and our lieutenant rations it out.

We stand in the trenches receiving last-minute
orders. Zero hour is five o'clock sharp.
We synchronize our watches.

The hours drag.

Suddenly our guns in the rear open up.

The German line becomes alive with red
shell-bursts.

The fury of our cannons grows wilder and wilder.

Firework signals leap into the air behind the
German trenches.

The guns maul each other's lines.

Machine-guns sweep No Man's Land.

We crouch in the corner of the bay waiting....

The bombardment swells and seethes. The
air overhead whistles, drones and shrieks.

We are smashing their lines and batteries.
The reply is weak. Their guns are nearly
silenced.

As far as one can see to the left and right
the night flickers with gun-flashes.

Renaud comes to my side. His face is
white. He asks a question:

"When do we go over?" His voice is trembling.

I look at my watch.

"Ten minutes," I say. I am sorry for him.
I ask him to stay with me during the attack.
He moves closer to me.

Fry, Broadbent and Anderson are in the
one bay with us. We prop the jumping-off
ladder against the parapet.

Five minutes!

The intensity of the bombardment seems to
have reached its peak. The trench shivers with
the force of the blasting.

Fry comes to my side. He holds his hand out.

"So long," he says. "I won't come out of this."

"Don't be crazy."

"Yes, I'm going to get it this time." His
lips are stretched tight over his teeth. "And I
don't care, either. I'm fed up."

He holds the Lewis gun ready to throw it
up over the parapet.

Suddenly No Man's Land becomes a curtain
of fire. A million shells seem to explode
out there. Smoke curls heavenwards. The
fierce flicker is blinding.

Barrage!

We are to advance behind the sheet of
seething flame.

I look at Renaud. His eyes are wide open.
He keeps licking his parched lips. I shout a
few last warnings into his ear. "Don't run.
Keep well behind the barrage. If you run
into it you'll be torn to pieces."

Clark comes into the bay. He looks at his
watch. He shouts something. We do not
hear what he shouts but we know it is the order
to go over.

We clamber up the ladder and out on to the field.

All along the line men are advancing with
their rifles on guard.

We walk slowly. The curtain of fire moves
on, methodically.

Out of the smoke behind us tanks crawl like
huge beetles spitting fire. They pass us.
From one of the holes a hand waves to us.

On and on!

We walk behind the raging curtain of flame.
The earth trembles and shakes as though it was
tortured by an earthquake. Our steps are unsteady.

We have advanced about a hundred yards.

There is no enemy fire.

It is nearly dawn. A blue-gray light appears.

Renaud walks by my side. His face is red
with excitement now. To my left Anderson
and Fry walk together.

We reach the German front line.

It is pulverized.

Legs and arms in gray rags lie here and
there. The trenches are almost flattened.

In the smoke-murk I step on something. It
is soft. I look down. It is the ripped-open
stomach of a German.

We walk on. The shield of fire advances.

Through the haze of smoke we see a wood
about a hundred yards ahead of us. The
barrage leaps upon it. Torn trunks of trees fly
into the air. Large branches fall near us. We
dodge them.

We are in the wood.

We advance cautiously for fear of snipers.

There is a movement in one of the trees
which has remained standing. Broadbent
raises his rifle to his shoulder and shoots into
the shattered branches.

A rifle drops—and then the man. He holds
his shoulder from whence comes a thin trickle
of blood. The rifle is fitted with telescopic
sights.

A sniper!

Some of our boys rush to him and cover him
with their rifles. The wounded sniper crawls
on his knees towards us. He is middle-aged
and has a gray walrus mustache—fatherly-looking.
His hands are folded in the gesture
which pleads for pity.

"Drei Kinder—three children," he shrieks.

We are on top of him.

Broadbent runs his bayonet into the kneeling
one's throat. The body collapses.

Some of us kick at the prostrate body as we
pass it. It quivers a little with each kick.

It begins to rain.

It pours. Sheets of it.

Up in the sky we see flashes of lightning,
but we cannot hear the thunder for the roar
of the artillery.

The earth is pulverized from the heavy
bombardment and this mixes with the rain, soon
making a thin half-liquid mud. It is
ankle-deep. We flounder and slip and fall as we
walk.

The barrage lifts.

We run through the mud slowly. It holds
our boots. We slip and stagger. We are
covered with mud. We can hear the thunder
now; it is tame after the barrage.

Machine-guns hammer at us.

Men begin to fall.

Shells explode out in front, showering us
with slime.

We are held up.

The field has become a sea of mud.

Our light artillery is coming up behind us.
The drivers are lashing at the horses. The
mud is almost knee-deep. The wheels stick.
The rain pours down upon us ceaselessly.

Near me a driver dismounts and grabs hold
of the reins and tries to pull his horses out of
the mud. The beasts struggle and hold back.
He strikes the animal nearest to him with the
stock of his whip. He beats its face. Blood
spurts from the animal's nose. It screams.
The heavy steel guns sink lower into the mud.

Each step is agony. The mud sucks us
down. But we keep going nevertheless.

Grenades land in the mud and do not explode.

We are near their trenches. With a
super-human effort we run toward them. We can
see the enemy leaving his positions and fleeing
to the rear. We slide out of the mud of the
field into the half water-filled trenches.

We have gained our objective.

We start to bail the water out of the trench.
We repair the parapets. Our saturated
clothes hang on us like leaden garments.

I look at my watch. It is six o'clock.

One hour to cross that field!

*****

The rain stops. It is quiet.

We open our haversacks and start to eat.

At noon they begin to shell our line. The
fire is weak. It lasts about ten minutes.

Suddenly it stops.

Counter-attack!

We put the Lewis gun on the parapet.
Broadbent works it while Anderson stands by
feeding him ammunition.

The Germans run slowly across the muddy
field toward us. There are swarms of them.
I fire my rifle point-blank into the
slow-moving ranks.

They keep coming.

To my right the Lewis gun leaps and tugs
as though it were a living thing.

When they are about fifty yards from us
they break and run back to their lines again.
We continue to fire until we cannot see them
any longer.

It is quiet save for the swishing sound of
the rain which has started again.

In front of our lines we can hear their
wounded calling for help. They moan and howl.

We settle down to rest.

Suddenly machine-gun fire opens up. We
jump to the parapets.

They are coming again!

They advance in waves, in close formation.
We stand on the firing-step and shoot into the
closely-packed ranks. Every shot tells. My
rifle is hot. On all sides of us machine-guns
hammer at the attacking ranks.

They are insane, it seems.

We cannot miss them.

On and on they come.

Above the clatter of the Lewis guns I can
hear snatches of song. They are singing.

They are close to us. I fire carefully.

They are close enough to throw grenades.

I see their ranks waver for a moment and
then they start to run slowly towards us. Our
line is a line of flame. Every gun is in action.

The singing is quite distinct now.

I can see faces clearly.

Each burst of Broadbent's gun cuts a swath
in the front ranks of the attacking troops.

They are close to our trenches. Their
singing has become a shriek which we hear above
the hammering of our rifles and guns.

I am filled with a frenzied hatred for these
men. They want to kill me but I will stay here
and shoot at them until I am either shot or
stabbed down. I grit my teeth. We are
snarling, savage beasts.

Their dead and wounded are piled up about
four deep.

They climb over them as they advance.

Suddenly they break and retreat.

We have repulsed them again. Their
wounded crawl towards our trenches. We
shoot at them.

The shrieking and howling out in front of us
sounds like a madhouse in turmoil.

We sink down to the bottom of our trenches
exhausted.

It is quiet once more.

Out in front the wounded men still howl.
One of them crawls into our trench and falls
near us. Half of his face is shot away.

His breath smells of ether! No wonder they
attacked like madmen!

Fry has a flesh wound in his right arm. We
dress the wound. It is not serious and we
advise him to go back as soon as it is dark.

Out in front the cries of the wounded are
worse than ever. We look at each other with
drawn, frightened faces.

*****

The afternoon wears on. We busy ourselves
with repairing the trench. We dig it
deeper and sandbag our parapets. Behind the
German lines we hear them preparing for
another attack. We hear voices, commands.

It is nearly dusk.

They begin to shell our trench. They have
not got the correct range and the shells fall
short in No Man's Land. The shells leap
among the bodies of the wounded and dead.
The lashing of the bombardment starts them
shrieking again. It hurls torn limbs and
entrails into our trench.

*****

We are lost.

Our ammunition is short.

Fry comes into our bay. His arm is stiff,
he cannot move it.

We talk of retreating. We work out a plan
for falling back.

Anderson begins to pray in a subdued,
scared voice:

"O Lord, look down upon me. Search me
out in Thine infinite pity..."

Broadbent turns on him in disgust.

"For the Lord's sake, Anderson, don't tell
God where you are or we'll all get killed.
Stop whining."

The shells come closer and closer.

We decide to fall back if the coming
counter-attack threatens to be successful.

The fire lifts.

We "stand-to."

We place the Lewis gun on the parapet and
begin to sweep the field. Anderson is working
the gun. Broadbent supplies him with freshly
filled pans of ammunition.

Across the field we see them climbing out
of their trenches. At last our artillery comes
to life. Overhead shrapnel hisses over our
heads and cracks to fragments in the face of
the attacking Germans.

Still they come. The field is full of them.
We see their officers out in front of them.
Bullets whiz past our heads and smack against
the parados in the rear. The firing grows
fiercer.

They are about a hundred yards from us.
At a given moment they fling themselves down.
In that moment their artillery begins to
hammer at our trench. They have the range now.
The shells scream and whistle and crash into the
trenches, on the parapets, behind us, on all
sides of us.

We cower down. We cannot face the fire.

The trench begins to cave in.

Sandbags are blown into the air.

The trench is nearly flattened.

The shelling lifts and passes to the rear.

Out in front we hear a maddened howl.

They are coming!

We look behind us. They have laid down a
barrage to cut us off.

We are doomed.

Anderson jumps from his gun and lies groveling
in the bottom of the shallow trench. I
tell Renaud to keep firing his rifle from the
corner of the bay. Broadbent takes the gun
and I stand by feeding him with what
ammunition we have left.

They are close to us now.

They are hurling hand grenades.

Broadbent sweeps his gun but still they come.

The field in front is smothered with gray smoke.

I hear a long-drawn-out hiss.

Ssss-s-sss!

I look to my right from where the sound
comes. A stream of flame is shooting into the
trench.

Flamenverfer! Flame-throwers!

In the front rank of the attackers a man is
carrying a square tank strapped to his back.
A jet of flame comes from a nozzle which he
holds in his hand. There is an odor of chemicals.

Broadbent shrieks in my ear:

"Get that bastard with the flame."

I take my rifle and start to fire. Broadbent
sweeps the gun in the direction of the flame-thrower
also. Anderson looks nervously to the rear.

"Grenades," I shout to him.

He starts to hurl bombs into the ranks of the
storm troops.

Odor of burning flesh. It does not smell unpleasant.

I hear a shriek to my right but I cannot turn
to see who it is.

We continue to fire towards the flame-thrower.
Broadbent puts a fresh pan on the
gun. He pulls the trigger. The gun spurts
flame. He sprays the flame-thrower. A bullet
strikes the tank on his back. There is a hissing
explosion. The man disappears in a cloud of
flame and smoke.

To my right the shrieking becomes louder.

It is Renaud.

He has been hit by the flame-thrower.

Flame sputters on his clothing. Out of one
of his eyes tongues of blue flame flicker. His
shrieks are unbearable.

He throws himself into the bottom of the
trench and rolls around trying to extinguish
the fire. As I look at him his clothing bursts
into a sheet of flame. Out of the hissing ball
of fire we still hear him screaming.

Broadbent looks at me and then draws his
revolver and fires three shots into the flaming
head of the recruit.

The advance is held up for a while. The
attackers are lying down taking advantage of
whatever cover they can find. They are firing
at us with machine-guns.

We decide to retreat.

I motion to Fry to jump up over the
parados. At that moment Clark crawls into the
bay. He motions to Fry who is about to crawl
over the top of the trench to come down. Fry
points to his arm.

"Get the hell down here," Clark shouts.

Fry does not obey but still points to his arm.

Clark draws his revolver. Broadbent steps
up to intervene. Clark turns. Fry reaches
into his holster with his left hand. He fires at
the officer's back. Clark sags to the bottom of
the trench with a look of wonder in his face.

It is nearly dark.

Out in front the firing increases. Broadbent
goes to the gun and throws a last pan on it.
He sweeps across the field. We hop up over
the parados and start to run to the rear.

The shells burst all around us.

We are ankle deep in mud.

On all sides of us men are running back.

Behind us we hear the Germans shriek as
they make the final rush for the abandoned
trench.

We run slowly. The rain starts to drizzle
again. We pass the cadavers of artillery
horses. A shower of shells explodes in front
of us. We are near the woods again. There
we will find shelter from the sledge-hammer
strokes of the bombardment.

Fry and Anderson run in front, Broadbent
and I to the rear.

Behind us the enemy is sweeping at us with
his machine-guns. With our remaining energy
we make a spurt towards the stumps of trees
behind which we will find shelter.

A shell lands in front of us.

Fry's legs from the knees down are torn
from under him.

He runs a few paces on his gushing stumps
and collapses.

As I pass him he entwines my legs with his
hands.

"Save me," he screams into my face. "Don't
leave me here alone."

I shake him off and run toward the woods
with Broadbent.

We run past the mutilated trees and at last
find ourselves near our old trench again. An
officer calls us into a bay. Other men of our
company are there. Broadbent is detailed for
sentry duty. I crawl into a dugout and go to
sleep.

*****

The sector is a sea of mud. From the rear
they have built a "duckboard" road—strips of
wood nailed together and laid across a roadway
of sandbags.

Down one of these roads what is left of the
battalion dribbles down towards the rear. We
pass corpses stuck in the mud—walking
wounded who became dizzy and fell into the
thin black ooze and were drowned.

At last we reach a cobblestone road. It
feels good to have something solid under one's
feet. We find a refreshment dugout and pile
in for cocoa and bread and butter. In the
light of the oil lamp we look haggard and worn.
Our faces are black with the mud through
which the stubble of beards protrude. We
are a ghastly-looking crew.

Our officer, a lieutenant from Company
"D," is in charge of us. He calls the roll.
Broadbent and I are the only survivors of our
section. Anderson got lost somewhere in the
woods.

We climb into waiting lorries outside of the
shelter. Gears grind. We begin our ride back
to rest.

CHAPTER TEN

AN INTERLUDE

The lorries stop. We get out. In the
dark we fall in and start to march
somewhere. We are far from the line.
It is nearly dawn.

My boots are twisted and hard after being
wet. They cut into my feet. Every step I
take shoots a pain up my leg. I limp as I
march. The sun comes up and still we keep
going.

We pass houses without gaping holes in
them. Children peep out from behind
half-opened doors and stare at us as we straggle
past. Finally we come to a halt in a neat
village. The inhabitants rush out to look at us.

There is no shortage of billets. Broadbent
and I are quartered together in a real house.
No barns or pig-sties this time.

The house is occupied by an old woman
about seventy, her husband and two young
women.

I limp into the dining-room of the cottage.
I sink into a chair. I untwist my puttees and
take my boots and socks off. The sock sticks
to my bloody foot. It is as raw-looking as an
uncooked Hamburger steak. The old woman
kneels down by my side and takes my foot in
her hand.

"My poor one ... my poor one," she says
in French.

She gives hurried orders to her gnarled
husband and to her daughters. They bring hot
water and a basin of olive oil.

She takes my bruised foot and bathes it in
the hot water. I wince as she immerses it. It
stings. She pours the oil over the raw wound.
It is soothing. She wraps my feet in
make-shift bandages. In between whiles she tells
me that she has two sons in the war. She takes
two soiled photographs from a pocket-book
and points sadly to the likenesses.

The daughters help me upstairs to a room
which the old lady has set aside for me. As I
go up the stairs Broadbent grins at me and
says: "You sure get all the luck."

The mail for the battalion comes up. Most
of the boys to whom packages are addressed
are either wounded or killed. We share them
among ourselves. Rations are plentiful too.
There are no fatigues and wine is cheap here.
Madame with whom we are billeted is like a
mother to us. We begin to put on flesh.

In the evening we sit listening to her telling
us stories of her two boys. The old man sits
by and nods his head in agreement. We are
becoming quite domesticated.

*****

Recruits come up from the base. The
battalion is being filled up. New officers are
assigned to us. Discipline tightens.

We are taken out every morning now for
two hours' drill. Broadbent is made a sergeant
and I am given two chevrons. He jokes with
me about my promotion:

"You know what a corporal is?"

"What?"

"A batman for the privates. You get hell
from the officers and no rest from your men."

There are new faces on all sides of us.
Broadbent and I stick together. We have
many things in common....

We have been in this village more than a
month now. At last the order comes that we
are to move on. The villagers stand in their
doorways and look silently at us as we are
drawn up. One of the girls comes out and
puts a parcel of food into my hands.

"Company, by the right, quick—march!"

The old lady runs along by the side of my
section for a few steps.

She puts her face up to mine and kisses me.

"Remember," she says, "take good care of
your feet...."

The girls and women wave their hands to us.
A company of little boys—those serious-faced
little boys of Northern France—escort us to
the outskirts of the village. We turn to the
right and swing up towards the line.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ARRAS

April, 1918.

We are in reserves on a quiet front
up north close to the Belgian border.
Reports of a German break-through reach us.
We hear that the enemy is close to Paris. To
the south we hear continuous artillery thunder.
Our officers give us talks on the need for
determination and courage. They tell us that we
are not to become panic-stricken. There is no
danger.

That night we are relieved and marched
towards the rear.

The next morning we are drawn up for
parade and addressed by the commander of the
division. He tells us that the commander-in-chief
has chosen the Canadian corps to act as
shock troops to break the German offensive.
We are to be a flying column, and wherever the
line weakens we are to be rushed in to fill the
gap.

"I hope," he concludes, "that you will
conduct yourselves to the greater glory of
Canadian arms."

The term "Canadian arms" sounds strange
to us. Most of us are clerks, students, farmers
and mechanics—but staff officers have a way of
speaking like that. To us this business of
military glory and arms means carrying parties,
wiring fatigues, wet clothes and cowering in a
trench under shell-fire. We stand rigid and
listen to the harangue.

We are marched to a road on which an
endless line of motor-lorries stand. They are
enormous five-ton affairs. We pile on. We
are crowded in—twenty to a truck. We start
towards the south.

We ride all day. As far as we can see the
line of black lorries stretch before us. We dash
through villages, past forests and lonely
farm-houses without a stop. Occasionally we change
our direction.

In the afternoon we stop while the lorries are
refueled. We look about for the field-kitchens.
There are none. We are hungry.

The men begin to grumble.

"Hey, when do we eat?"

"How about some grub?"

We are told we will get our rations when we
arrive at our destination the next morning.
Talk becomes mutinous.

A voice shouts:

"Are we downhearted?"

There is a medley of replies:

"You're god-damned right; we are."

"T'hell with the war."

"We want grub."

We climb into the lorries and the tiresome
ride begins again.

Night.

We are still riding. The bumping and
bouncing of the lorries has tired us out completely.

The road becomes rougher. There must
have been a battle in this vicinity, for the roads
are full of fresh, yellow shell-holes. It is
impossible to lie down to rest; there is little room
and the jolting of the truck is almost
unbearable. We recline against the fenced sides of
the lorry. We have not stopped for hours.

We defecate from between the bars at the
side of the bouncing truck—a difficult and
unpleasant task.

We stand, sit or recline in attitudes of
hopeless despair. We are hungry, thirsty—we have
smoked our last few cigarettes. A light drizzle
begins to fall; there is no tarpaulin covering
over the top of the truck.

To the left, up towards the line a mile or
two away, we see an ammunition dump blowing
itself up in sporadic explosions. It must
have been hit by a stray shell. In the blackness
of the night it looks as though a boy had
thrown a match among a giant heap of
fireworks. We have seen these things before—they
keep on going off for weeks—open-air
enormous storage-places for ammunition
supplies, sometimes a mile square in area.

We crowd to the side of the truck to watch
the sight. We talk among ourselves about it.

"They say those 'coalbox' shells cost five
thousand dollars each."

"Can you imagine what a little barrage costs,
then?"

We lapse into silence as we try to calculate
the possible cost of a preliminary bombardment.
After a while some one says in an awed voice:

"Millions, I guess."

"Then what must a scrap like Passchendaele
cost? They were hammering away there for
months. First the Belgians tried to take it,
then the Imperials, then the Anzacs and then
we did. They must've fired millions of
shells...."

This problem in mathematics is too much for
us. If one twelve-inch shell costs five
thousand dollars, then a major battle must
cost—it is too much....

"I bet that dump going up over there must
cost a billion dollars."

"And I'll bet somebody is making a profit
on those shells whether they are fired at the
Germans or whether they just blow up...."

"Sure they do."

A surprised voice from a corner says:

"Just think of all the people that's getting a
big hunk of swag out of it. Shoes, grub,
uniforms, bully beef..."

He breaks off.

We all join in enumerating the various
materials of war on which some one may be
making a profit.

"... and big profits, too."

The lorry hits the side of a shell-hole and
knocks the breath out of us for a while.

We continue the conversation.

"Sure, and I'll bet that those people don't
want the war to end in a hurry."

"'Course not."

"At Étaples when I was goin' on my leave
I heard a madame in an estaminet say she
hoped the war never ended—with her gettin'
five francs for a bottle of vinegar what she
called vin blanc. Why should she?"

"All of us wish the war was over, but believe
me, there's plenty that don't."

"... there's those that make the shells, the
clothes; them that sell the food, rifles, socks,
underwear, ships, boots..."

Others break in:

"Flags, aeroplanes, artillery..."

"Officers with cushy jobs in blighty..."

"Paymasters in Millbank..."

"Society dames playing the Florence
Nightingale with wounded officers..."

"... these men who are making money on
the war have wives and daughters and
women..."

"... there must be millions of them...!"

"... and in every country, too. In
Germany and France and America...!"

"... and they're all praying to God tonight
for the war to last for ever while we're
riding in this god-damned lorry..."

"... and God must be listening to them.
Look how long it's been going on."

The thought of people benefiting from our
misery throws us into a melancholy silence.

Broadbent has abstained from joining the
conversation. It is a little mutinous in tone
and as a sergeant he did not take part. After
a while he answers the last speaker.

"Maybe they're making money out of it, but
they don't really want it to go on. They don't
think of it the way we do. To them, I suppose,
it's just—a war."

But the mutinous grumbler will not be downed.

"Yeah, that's it. To them it's only a war
but we have to fight it."

From out of the corner of the lorry, a voice—we
are strangers to each other since so many
recruits have come up—we do not recognize
each other's voices—this voice says:

"There's two kinds of people in this world—there's
those that like wars and those that
fight 'em, pal."

There is a sudden downpour of rain. We
are soaked to the skin. The lorry rumbles and
bounces on. We are tossed about like quarters
of beef on the way to market. We try to rest....

*****

It is still raining in the morning when the
lorries come to a stop. We scramble out, eager
to stretch our legs. We are stiff with the cold
and the wet. We are famished. We look
about anxiously for the cook-wagons. There
are none. The officers explain that our rations
did not catch up with us and that we will eat as
soon as they arrive.

We are in a deserted village. There is no
food to be found anywhere. We are assigned
to billets and sit miserably listening to the rain
beating down on the roof of the barn in which
we are quartered. We search under the straw
for food. We find a piece of hard, moldy
bread—we share it among ourselves and eat it.

Later in the morning we pile into the lorries
again. We start back up north again. We do
not try to understand why we are going back.
We are simply going.

The day passes without event. We stop
several times but still there is no food. Our
officers are ashamed to face us and in truth they
are little better off than we are.

Night comes.

Still the line of lorries races into the night
over shell-pocked roads.

We scrape the linings of our pockets for
shreds and crumbs of tobacco, and with this we
roll cigarettes in coarse paper. We pass the
soggy makeshift cigarettes around from mouth
to mouth.

Up towards the front we hear the thunder of
the artillery, it rises and falls but never fully
subsides. Now and then from various points
it breaks out into a rapid tempo.

We stop during the night in a gutted village.
Straggling, haggard English troops pour into
the streets from the road leading down from
the line. They are pale, like us, from the lack
of sleep. Many of them are walking-wounded.

"How is it up there?" we ask.

"'Orrible. 'Einie 'as come through and no mistake."

We try to cadge some cigarettes, but there
are none to be had.

Into the lorries again.

We ride all through the night.

The roads are becoming smoother. Apparently
we are going further behind the lines.

We are so exhausted that we begin to doze
and nod a little. Feet, legs, arms, rifles and
equipment are jumbled together in the
cramped quarters. Every now and then there
is a shake-up as some one tries to make himself
more comfortable.

"Hey," cries a drowsy voice, "take your foot
off my face."

"Aw, take your face off my foot," comes the
answer.

*****

There is a greenish blur in the sky in the
east. It is not quite dawn.

The lorries come to a halt.

Sleepy faces look up to see where we are.
We climb down and look about with groggy
eyes. My tongue is almost hardened for
the want of water. If only we had cigarettes—

No food. Promises. We are doubtful but
we have no alternative but to wait.

We line up. The roll is called. The
command is given and we march up a gravel road
towards the line. Our stomachs are flat
through hunger, and our packs tug painfully
at our shoulders. Our clothes are still wet with
the rain.

The fields on the sides of the road on which
we march are freshly plowed, but we do not see
a single inhabitant nor any sign of life from
the houses which we pass. No smoke from the
chimneys. Farm implements stand idle in the
fields.

As we march, houses appear more numerous.
Soon they line the road. Still no sign of life in
any of them. It seems as though a pestilence
had swept over this part of the country. We
do not see any signs of fighting, not even a
solitary shell-hole.

Soon we are in cobble-paved streets. We see
shops.

No shopkeepers. We look at the signs over
the entrances of the stores.

We are in the city of Arras.

It is a large city for northern France. There
are hotels, churches, stores, wine-shops. It is
broad daylight now, but there is not a single
soul in sight other than the marching troops.
Our heavy footsteps echo down the empty streets.

There is an old-world quaintness about the
buildings. We pass a soft brown Gothic
cathedral, and in a few minutes are marching
past the enormous rococo Hôtel de Ville. We
look at the signs at the street corners. We
read: Grande Place. The square is flanked by
Flemish houses which are built with their
upper stories projecting over the footways and
supported by columns so as to form an arcade.
Not a civilian soul can be seen.

We halt. We are in one of the main streets.
On both sides of the street are stores—grocery
stores, tobacco shops, clothing stores,
wine-shops. In the windows we see displays of food
and cigarettes temptingly set out—tins of
lobster, glass jars of caviare, tinsel-capped
magnums of champagne. I look through a
glass window and read: Veuve Cliquot—the
bottle looks important and inviting. In
another window I read: Smoke De Reszke cigarettes.

We ask our captain—a fidgety, middle-aged
man by the name of Penny—why the town is
deserted. He explains that the Germans
dropped a few long-range shells into the city a
few days ago, and the inhabitants, thinking
that Heinie was about to enter, fled leaving the
city as we now see it.

We rest on the curb of the street, looking
hungrily at the food and cigarettes behind the
thin glass partitions. Little knots of soldiers
gather and talk among themselves.

As I stand talking to Broadbent a man in
the company ahead of us idly kicks a cobblestone
loose from its bed. He picks it up and
crashes it through a wide gleaming
shop-window. The crash and the sound of the
splintering, falling glass stills the hum of
conversation. The soldier steps through the
window and comes out with a basket full of
cigarettes. He tosses packages to his
comrades.

Another crash!

More men stream through the gaping windows.

Officers run here and there trying to pacify
the men.

As far as I can see, men are hurling stones
through windows and clambering in for supplies.

The street is a mass of scurrying soldiers.

Discipline has disappeared.

I step through an open, splintered window
and soon come out laden with tins of peas,
lobster, caviare, bottles of wine. Broadbent
and I visit many shops. In each are crowds
of soldiers ransacking shelves, cupboards,
cellars. Some of them are chewing food as they
pillage.

When we have filled our bags with food,
drink and cigarettes we make off to look for a
place to rest.

We climb through a window of a pretentious-looking
dwelling. It is deserted. We
prowl through the house. In the dining-room
the table is set for the next meal. There is no
sign of disorder—the inhabitants must have
fled without preparation of any sort.

We dump our sacks down in the center of
the room and begin to prepare the food. In a
little while we are tackling lobster salad, small
French peas, bread and butter, and washing it
down with great gulps of sauterne. We do not
speak, but simply devour the food with wolfish
greed.

At last we are sated. We search in the sacks
and find tins of choice Turkish cigarettes. We
light up, putting our dirty feet on the table
and smoke in luxury.

We hunt through the house and find the
owner's room. Water is boiled and soon we are
shaved and powdered with the late owner's
razor and talcum. We throw ourselves on the
valanced beds and fall asleep.

*****

We are wakened by the sound of crashing
noises downstairs. We descend. A party is
going on in the drawing-room. Some of our
men have found the house. They are drunk.
Some sprawl on the old-fashioned brocaded
gilt furniture. Some dance with each other.

More men arrive.

One of the recruits, a machine-gunner,
draws his revolver from his holster and takes
pot-shots at a row of china plates which line a
shelf over the mantelpiece.

His companions upbraid him:

"Hey, cut out that bloody shooting; you're
filling the damned room with smoke."

The conversation is boastful and rowdy.

"Some of the men bust into the church and
took all the gold and silver ornaments...."

"... I looked in at headquarters, the officers
are havin' a great time too. Oh, it's a
lovely war..."

"... There's wine cellars in this town as
big as a house. They'll never get the outfit out
of here...."

"They'll send for the M.P.'s...."

"We'll give 'em what-for when they come,
don't worry...."

Broadbent and I go out into the street. It
is nearly dark. Men stagger about burdened
with bags of loot. They are tipsy. The officers
are nowhere to be seen. Up towards the line
the sky is beginning to be lit with the early
evening's gun flashes.

Over to the south side of the town a red glow
colors the sky. Some of our men must have
set fire to some houses. As we look we see
flames and a shower of sparks leap into the air.

We look at each other in amazement.

"Do you know that this is looting a town?"
Broadbent says.

"Of course it is."

"There will be merry hell to pay for this."

We turn into the Grande Place. Men lie
drunk in the gutters. Others run down the
street howling, blind drunk.

There is nothing to do, so we walk into a
wineshop. We find a bottle of cognac and
drink it between us. We go out again.

The streets are bedlams.

From the houses come sounds of pianos as
though they were being played by madmen.
Men laugh, sing, brawl.

We find an officer and ask where we are to
report. He is a little drunk, too. He does
not know and staggers on.

The flames of the fire to the south leap
higher and higher.

Overhead we hear the whirr of motors.
Planes are reporting that the city is occupied.
Shells begin to scream into the city. The
detonations sound louder in the echoing streets.

Falling masonry and bricks make it dangerous
to stay out of doors.

The shells come faster and faster.

Bodies begin to litter the streets.

The explosions swell into the steady roar of
a bombardment.

The streets are lit with the flashes of the
shell-bursts.

Buildings take fire.

Men run to shelter. The revelry turns into
nightmare.

Broadbent and I find a deep cellar. Over
our heads the rafters shiver with the force of
the shell-bursts.

Other men come streaming down the stairs.
The bombardment has sobered them.

Sacks of food and drink are piled into the
corners of the cellar.

After a while we fall asleep....

*****

In the morning we awake with champagne
hang-overs. We feel groggy and thirsty. We
go out into the streets. Soldiers are scurrying
about carrying sacks of looted provisions.

By noon most of the men are drunk again.
Men stagger through the streets waving empty
wine bottles. Some of them have found a
French quartermaster storehouse where some
French officer uniforms were stored. They cut
ludicrous figures in the ill-fitting blue tunics.

News of the looting has spread to Army
headquarters.

A detachment of mounted English Military
Police approach the town.

The police are our traditional enemies.

We organize a volunteer defense corps.

We post ourselves on the roofs of houses
which overlook the road which leads into the
city. We are armed with rifles, machine-guns,
hand-grenades.

As the police canter close to the town they
are met with a burst of rifle fire.

Two horses are hit and rear madly into
the air. The M.P.'s draw rein and about face.

This is our first victory over the police.
The retreat is greeted with cheers.

We celebrate the event by going back into
the main streets and drinking more wine.

Comrades meet and relate incidents of the day.

"... the officers are as drunk as we
are...."

"... two guys got into a cellar that had
one of those big vats ... they turned on the
faucet and started to drink out of their
mess-tins ... got so drunk that they forgot to
turn it off after a while ... when we looked
through the trap-door this morning they were
floating in about five feet of wine...."

"... God, who would've thought that
plain gravel-crushers like us would ever get
rich pickin's like this...."

"... the soldier's dream come true, all
right, all right...."

"... hey, the frogs is supposed to be our
allies...."

"What, with vin rouge at five francs a bottle?"

"Well, why the hell didn't they bring the
grub up...?"

*****

Later in the afternoon the officers appear.

Men are rounded up.

We have had our fill.

Companies are reorganized.

M.P.'s patrol the streets.

Our company is taken to a huge chalk pit on
the outskirts of the town.

We get ready to go up the line.

Night comes and we start our trek up
towards the front trenches. In our packs we
carry tinned goods, bottles of wine, pieces of
cheap jewelry. We have discarded our blankets
and extra pair of shoes to make way for
the loot. We are blear-eyed and groggy....

*****

The enemy offensive stopped just outside of
Arras.

The front is quiet.

We lie in the newly-built dugouts and
recover from the after-effects of the looting.
Many of the men have terrific pains in the
stomach. We have eaten too many tins of
lobster and other dubious canned ware. There
are some cases of ptomaine poisoning. We
have no money and we play poker with cans
of food, bottles of wine, stolen trinkets as
stakes.

There is nothing to do but lie in the
dugouts and talk. Once in a while a heavy shell
drones on its way to the rear.

"... it's about time this god-damned war ended."

Grunts of approval.

"... first we take one of their lousy
trenches and then they take it back. It's a
bloody game of see-saw. They ought to call
the god-damned thing a draw."

"... what the hell are we fightin' for, anyhow...?"

"Search me...."

"Do we wanna fight...?"

"Quit bellyachin'...."

"Well, I'm askin' yuh."

"Naw, 'course not. Ast me somethin' easy."

"... and Heinie don't wanna fight either,
does he?"

"... and most of the officers don't either...."

"Sure."

"... and the frogs...."

"Sure."

"Well, then what the hell do we fight for?"

One of the men begins to sing:

"I wanna go home, I wanna go home,
The bullets they whistle, the cannons they roar—"

"Well, what're you gonna do about it?"

"I say the gravel-crushers on both sides
ought to say 't'hell with it,' and start to walk
down the communication trenches...."

Silence greets this unusual proposition. We
sit thinking and smoking. After a while some
one speaks up:

"Yeah, and what would happen then, eh?"

Another silence. A voice from one of the
corners is heard:

"Why, you god-damned fool, the bloody
war would be over; that's what would happen."

Broadbent feels that the conversation has
gone too far. He feels the responsibility of his
three stripes. He intervenes:

"C'mon, there—cut it out—cut it out. This
kind of talk ain't gonna get you anywhere. It
only makes you feel lousy."

"Listen, pal, we can't feel any lousier than
we feel right now."

"Well, it won't do you any good."

We lapse into another silence. Presently
the same voice from the corner says:

"God! Imagine all the gravel-crushers on
both sides walking down the line. Can yuh
see the faces on the M.P.'s?"

He laughs out loud and then:

"Fat chance. If we had any bloody brains
we wouldn't be here in the first place."

Like most serious trench conversations, the
talk seems fruitless, so we speak of more trivial
things....

It is the night of the third day. We are
being relieved.

An American battalion comes up. This is
their first trip into the line. They talk loudly
and light cigarettes. The night is quiet. They
call to each other as though no enemy lay in
hiding a few hundred yards off.

"Hey, when does the war start?" they shout
towards the German lines.

"Oh, boy, wait until Fritzie hears we're here."

We plead with them to speak quietly.

"Aw, t'hell..."

"Let's get goin'."

"Can the Kaiser."

"For the love of God keep quiet until we
get out and then make all the god-damned
noise you want to...."

Flickering matches appear here and there.
The shouting continues. We turn our posts
over to them and file down the communication
trenches. We walk rapidly for we know what
will happen if the noise continues.

Overhead we hear the hum of planes.

Finally we reach the road leading to the rear.

"They'll get all the war they want soon
enough...."

Suddenly we hear the roar of bombardment.
The front lines are being shelled.

We continue our trek towards the rear.

Stretcher-bearers pass us on the way up to
the line.

CHAPTER TWELVE

VENGEANCE

Midsummer, 1918.

We are far behind the lines. No
threat of death reaches us here. The
countryside blooms. We have been out on
rest now for nearly a month. The battalion
is built up to battle strength. We drill every
morning under the merciless sun.

We hear rumors of battles. The idea persists
among us that the Germans will win the war.

We are too far from the line to hear the
rumble of the artillery fire.

We start "going over the tapes." White
tapes are laid on the ground representing
trenches that we will later have to assault.
We practice the assault again and again.

We have adopted a new technique of attack.
We no longer charge in waves, instead we
make short rushes by sections in Indian file.
In this fashion each section of six or eight men
offers less target to the enemy, only the man
in front is visible to the enemy. The section
springs to its feet, rushes a few yards and
flings itself down while another section on the
flank makes its rush. This is called
"infiltration." It is a German tactic. Under the
mid-day sun we leap to our feet again and again
and dash towards the imaginary trenches and
throw ourselves into the brush or on to the
stones and brambles.

*****

The company is drawn up ready to be
dismissed. Our captain reads an official report
on the American attack on Chateau Thierry.

"... all ranks are warned of the danger of
'bunching' during an attack. At Château-Thierry
our allies, the Americans, advanced
towards the enemy lines, and at the first
show of resistance, huddled together in groups
which offered superb targets for the German
artillery. This resulted in unnecessary loss of
life altogether out of proportion to the gains
made...."

Discipline becomes more severe. The official
automaton salute is insisted upon. After
three years in the line we are taken out and
taught to salute properly.

We go over the tapes more often.

We go on long route marches.

The food becomes poor.

We are being hardened.

*****

It is the first week in August. We are
marched over to a neighboring village occupied
by brigade headquarters. It is a stifling
day. The earth is baked. As we march we
kick up clouds of fine dust. Our uniforms are
powdered with it. It mixes with our sweat
and we streak it across our faces with our
hands. When we spit, the spittle drops like
little balls of mud. Some one attempts to
start a song, but we are too parched.

We rest for a few minutes before entering
the village. The usual crowd of little boys is
waiting to escort us down the main street.

We fall in and tighten our equipment. The
battalion band strikes up and we swing down
the cobblestone road past the brigade
headquarters. The general stands by the side of
the road. "Eyes—right!"

We snap our heads in his direction. The
officers salute by hand. From other parts of
the village we hear more bands playing.

Finally we draw up, soaked in sweat, in the
parade ground on the outskirts of the village.
Our faces are as red as the poppies of which
the war poets are writing back home. We are
burdened down by our packs. Our hot woolen
uniforms stick to us and chafe the skin
wherever they touch. We form a brigade square—one
battalion on each side. We stand erect as
though we were driven into the ground like so
many fence posts.

The brigadier-general comes into the square.
The bugles sound the general's salute.

We present arms. Our bayonets flash in
the sunlight. The general acknowledges the
salute. We stand at ease.

An aide hands the brigadier-general a paper
and he reads to us:

"... and after the Llandovery Castle was
torpedoed, not a helping hand was offered to
our wounded comrades ... no instance of
barbarism in the world's history can equal the
sinking of this hospital ship ... think of it,
more than three hundred wounded Canadians
struggling in the choppy waters of the English
Channel...."

The white morning sun shimmers on the
general's brass and polished leather as he reads
us the report. He speaks calmly and dispassionately,
which lends weight and authenticity
to his remarks.

"... the lifeboats were sprayed by
machine-gun fire as the nurses appealed in vain
to the laughing men on the U-boat ... the
amputation cases went to the bottom instantly
... they couldn't swim, poor chaps ... the
salt water added to their dying agony...."

Well, we had seen the frenzy of the
attackers when they came over reeking with ether.
It is easy to believe this story.

The general continues:

"... men, we are going into action in a
few days, and we will be given an opportunity
to avenge the lives of our murdered comrades
... an enemy like the German—no, I will
not call him German—an enemy like the Hun
does not merit humane treatment in war
... very well, if they choose to suspend the
accepted rules for conducting civilized warfare,
by God, two can play at that game...."

The hard faces of the men harden still more
as the story continues.

Other staff officers address us:

"... history will recall that the gallant
Canadians did not allow this wanton act of
barbarism to go unavenged...."

A man shuffles uneasily here and there in
the ranks.

"... the battle in which we will soon be
engaged will be remembered by generations
still unborn as the Battle of Llandovery Castle..."

More men shuffle in the ranks. A non-com. spits
out an order to stand still.

Our colonel speaks out. We like him. He
has risen from the ranks.

"... I'm not saying for you not to take
prisoners. That's against international rules.
All that I'm saying is that if you take any
we'll have to feed 'em out of our rations...."

Some of us laugh at this. Most of us are
silent, however.

We march back through that cloud of rolling dust.

*****

We move closer to the front. We march by
night, footsore and smelling sour of sweat, and
sleep like dead men during the blistering
August days.

All night long we tramp up the poplar-lined
roads. Every now and then we are
forced off the gravel on to the fields to make
way for the tanks, tractors and heavy artillery
which rolls in a metallic stream towards the
trenches.

We are now within range of heavy shell-fire.
We can see the flashes of the guns up yonder.

At dawn we take refuge in woods or in
unused reserve trenches. As the sun rises all
life, it seems, is suspended. Neither man nor
beast stirs. We are utterly exhausted. The
tanks and heavy guns sprawl like sleeping
dinosaurs covered with camouflage tarpaulin.

The month of drill and training has made
us nervous. We are irritable like overtrained
prize-fighters. We squabble with each other.

The area behind the lines swarms with
troops and artillery. What havoc the enemy
could play, if he only knew!

We lie in a wood right behind the heavy
artillery lines. It is midday. We are jumpy.
Near us a few birds chirp gayly as though no
war was in progress. In our maniac fear we
think that the birds will give our position away,
We curse them:

"Get the hell away from here, you bloody
bastards...."

We sit up bleary-eyed and angry.

We throw stones at them.

They fly away, frightened.

We go back to sleep.

*****

Amiens.

It is night.

We are to go into action to-morrow morning.

We are to take no prisoners. We say this
on all sides. It has become an unofficial order.
It is an understood thing.

Rumors spread. We are all to have ten
days' leave in Paris after the scrap. This is
to be the last battle in the war. After this—then
home! General Foch is personally taking
charge of the advance. And so on.

We hear reports of the artillery preparation
which is to precede our attack. There are five
lines of artillery on the twenty-mile front
standing hub to hub. Shells will explode
every second in every three-foot area within
Heinie's lines. One man figures out that a
louse will not be able to live through a fire of
such intensity.

We sit in the dug-out. We cannot sleep.

We talk aimlessly:

"What's the best way of not taking
prisoners?" a recruit asks.

There are conflicting opinions.

One is for the use of the bayonet.

"Any one that would do what those bastards
did to the hospital ship ought to get a bayonet.
It'd give me plenty of satisfaction, believe me."

"Grenades are good..."

"Yeah, that's right. Pat him on the back
and then slip a bomb in his pocket when he
ain't lookin' and then say, ''Raus mit ihm,
Heinie!' He runs about twenty yards and up
he goes. I did that to a Fritz at Vimy. He
just came apart..."

"The bayonet makes a messy job of it,"
Broadbent says. "The guts stick to the blade
when you withdraw...."

A recruit screws his face up, sickened.

"It's the suction that does that," the
sergeant explains.

"... a rifle makes a neat job. The bullet
is hot when it hits. It sterilizes as it goes
through."

One of the latest arrivals, a First Contingent
man, speaks up. He has been silent so far.

"Why shouldn't we kill the bastards? Sure,
we ought to kill 'em. At Ypres in 1915 I saw
one of our officers crucified to a barn
door...."

We look at him with respect. He has a
yellow, elongated face and deep hollow eyes. He
looks like a man who has seen terrible things.

"... he had a Heinie bayonet through each
hand and one through his feet. Crucified, by God."

The colonel comes into the dugout. He
mixes freely with us and jokes:

"Well, boys, we'll have lots of souvenirs
tomorrow, eh?"

*****

It is an hour before dawn. It is warm.
There is not a sound to hint that this is a
battlefield. Nocturnal insects buzz and hum.
Birds chirp and sing. We lie hidden in an
abandoned field of ripening wheat. We are
waiting for zero hour. It is unusually quiet.

From behind the German lines we hear the
indistinct, far-away voices of men calling to
one another. Hitherto this has been a quiet
front and the enemy is unsuspecting.

Half a minute later we hear another hollow
report. Boom! These are the signals
heralding the approach of the moment of attack.

The third detonation!

Instantaneously the whole world becomes a
flickering inferno of howling steel. The roar
of the barrage is unbearable. My ear-drums
ache.

We spring to our feet and advance slowly
behind the pulverizing curtain of fire which
dances before us. A veritable whining canopy
of steel arches over our heads.

Behind us a wave of tanks advance. They
soon pass us. We are literally advancing
behind a wall of steel.

The air is thick with the pale yellow smoke
of high explosives—the color of boarding-house
tea.

I feel a warm trickle on the sides of my
neck. My ears are bleeding from the force
and fury of the detonations.

We advance slowly; sections in Indian file.
We walk at a snail-like even gait. Penny
advances in front of his company and directs
the pace. Sometimes we halt waiting for the
barrage to move on out of the range of danger
to us. A wave of Penny's hand and we move on.

We reach the front line. It is deserted.
The enemy must have anticipated the attack
and withdrawn in advance.

The second line is reached and still no
resistance. We walk on calmly. The barrage
has annihilated everything in its iron-shod
march. The trenches are flattened.

The fire lifts.

Out in front we hear the tanks blazing away
at the enemy's lines.

The air clears a little.

Out of the thin smoke hazy, silhouetted
figures emerge.

"Here they come..." we shout to each other.

We bring our rifles to our hips, half on
guard.

The figures run with funny jerky steps
towards us, holding their hands high above
their heads.

We open rifle fire as we advance. The
silhouettes begin to topple over. It is just like
target practice.

We advance.

They come closer.

There are hundreds of them. They are
unarmed. They open their mouths wide as
though they are shouting something of great
importance. The rifle fire drowns out their
words. Doubtless they are asking for mercy.
We do not heed. We are avenging the sinking
of the hospital ship. We continue to fire.

Everything is indistinct in the smoke and
it is not easy to pick them off.

They are nearly on top of us. There is a
look of amazement in their faces as we shoot.
We are firing point-blank now.

The gray figures continue to fall, one by one,
until only a handful is left.

They realize they are doomed and they
scream. We can hear them now even above
the rifle fire, we are so close.

"Bitte—bitte (please—please)."

Their voices are shrill. They are mostly
youngsters.

They throw themselves into the crater of a
shell-hole. They cower there. Some of our
men walk to the lip of the hole and shoot into
the huddled mass of Germans. Clasped hands
are held up from out of the funnel-shaped
grave. The hands shake eloquently asking for
pity. There is none. Our men shoot into the
crater. In a few seconds only a squirming
mass is left. As I pass the hole I see the lips
of a few moving. I turn away.

We continue to advance. Still there is no
resistance.

Suddenly the earth in front of us begins to
shoot up little fountains of dirt. Rifle fire.

We begin to run. In front of us there is an
incline and beyond a ridge.

We run faster.

Penny falls.

We run still faster.

The fire becomes hotter.

Men begin to fall.

Machine guns hammer in front of us. My
section throws itself into a shell-hole. We
wait for the fire to subside. The tanks are
out in front of us. We will wait....

*****

Our colonel crawls into the hole.

"What the hell are you doing here—get
out," he shouts, pointing to the ridge ahead
of us.

We share the pans of ammunition between
us. I carry the Lewis gun. We are dead tired
and start to run towards the ridge. On all
sides of us men are running with slow, clumsy
movements. The machine-gun bounces on my
shoulder. The ammunition pans clatter
against the backs of those who carry them.
Each step becomes agony.

At last we reach the foot of the hill.

We start up. It is hard to breathe. It is
hot and we drip with sweat. Behind and on
top of the hill the machine-guns spurt and
sweep.

The blood rushes through my head like a
thundering torrent. My body is a hammering
cauldron of sound. My ears ring, my head
buzzes. My heart knocks like a faulty racing
motor piston.

Overhead an occasional shell crashes into
fragments, but this is not what holds our eyes
glued ahead of us in hypnotic terror. On the
top of the ridge little spurts of yellow earth
leap up! They have withdrawn from the
ridge and are now sweeping it with machine-gun
fire. We quicken our pace.

Half-way up the hill we slow down. We
are weighted down by our burdens. Our
movements are like those of one pursued in
a nightmare.

On and up!

We are near the top. A few more steps
and we will fling ourselves down on the crest
of the ridge and get the gun into action. A
few more steps!

Our lungs and throats whistle. Our faces
are reddish blue with exertion. The veins on
our necks stand out like black twisted cords.

On the flanks the ridge is taken. Shells
explode everywhere.

The little spurts of yellow earth continue
to leap up in front of us as though mischievous
boys were throwing stones from behind the hill.
But from behind the hill comes the noise as
though a thousand riveting machines had gone mad.

We are on top of the ridge. A few more
steps to the other side!

I stumble and fall. I jump to my feet and
run a few steps. I fall again. I try to get
on my feet but my right leg gives way.

My right foot feels numb. I look at it; it
is spurting a ruby fountain. The top of the
bubbling stream glistens in the sun.

I feel empty inside, nauseous.

I am frightened.

As though speaking to a stranger, I say:

"My God, I am wounded." I look at the
blood with surprise.

I roll into a shell-hole for safety.

Our guns are hammering into the valley
below. They begin to move forward. I lie
where I am. The sound of the fighting moves
away from me, farther, farther.... The
enemy is falling back.

I look at my foot. It is still spurting
blood—an artery must be cut. Something must be
done. I make my handkerchief into a tourniquet
and tie it tightly above my ankle. I
twist it until my foot feels colds. The blood
ceases to spurt and drips now; drip, drip....

I am weak. My mouth is dry and my throat
cries for water. I look into my water-bottle—it
is empty. I remember that I emptied it
coming through the biting smoke of the barrage.

I lean against the side of the cone-shaped
shell-hole and watch the dark red blood ooze
out of the hole in my boot on to the yellow
earth and sink in.

The noise of the battle sounds fainter and
fainter....

I am alone in the hole. Near by I hear men
groaning and howling—I forgot all about the
others when I saw the blood leaping from my
heavy, dirty boot.

An hour passes. The boot is covered with
nearly-black hardened blood. I am wearing
a boot of congealed blood, it seems.

Wounded, I say to myself again and again.
Wounded—home—no more war now—no
more lice—a bed.

I am glad. I look gratefully at the torn
boot, at the blood-soaked piece of earth on
which it limply rests. I am glad—glad—soon
I will see lights coming from houses and hear
the voices of women and feel their cool hands
on my face.

Yes ... I am happy.

I begin to cry.

A sharp pain shoots up my leg.

I feel in my pockets for a cigarette.
Fortunately I have one. I light up and fill my
lungs with the soothing smoke. I exhale with
a sigh of happy relief. My pain seems less.

*****

I am thirsty. My mouth is gummy for the
lack of saliva. I crawl out of the shell-hole,
dragging my wounded foot after me. I will
find one of the killed and take his water-bottle.

I slide into a large shell crater. A man lies
huddled at the bottom.

It is Broadbent.

One of his legs hangs by a mere strip of skin
and flesh to his thigh. He opens his eyes and
smiles weakly. His face is bathed in sweat
and pain. His lips move slightly. He is
speaking. I put my head close to his and
listen.

"I can't look at it—tell me is it off?" he
whispers.

I lift his head up and give him a drink of
the water I have found. It is luke-warm. He
drinks.

At the bottom of the hole there is a wide
black pool of blood. His partly-amputated leg
is twisted at a grotesque angle—suddenly the
strip of skin and flesh breaks. The leg moves
a little.

"Tell me is it off?"

I cannot answer him.

The pool of blood grows as though it were
fed by a subterranean spring. It fills the
narrow, conical bottom of the hole. He lies with
his face twisted so that he does not see his leg.

"... all the time—you know, in the night
when I'd think—this is the thing I was scared
of most...." He moans.

His face is a dirty white—it is turning green.
His eyes are half closed. His breathing
becomes heavier. The deep whistling intakes
sound above all the other sounds of the field.

I move to alter my position. His eyes
follow me, beseeching me not to forsake him. I
reassure him.

"Is it off—all of it, I mean?" he asks.

"Rest quiet," I say, avoiding his question.
"The stretcher-bearers will soon be here."

He looks at my foot and smiles faintly.

"You're lucky. A blighty. No more fatigues—"

Time passes.

The heavy blistering August sun drags itself
higher into the sky. The noise of the battle
is a dull rumble now. Midday insects drone
sleepily. In the side of the shell-hole there is
an opening of an ant-hill. I watch the beady
insects scurrying in and out. Two of them
struggle to carry a little ball of ordure uphill.
Again and again it topples them over. They
try again, others come to their aid, and finally
it is taken into the dark little hole.

After a long while he speaks again.

"I know it isn't off—I can feel my toe when
I wriggle it—it can't be off."

But the leg lies motionless near the pool
of blood. He does not look to see, however.

His breath comes faster. He looks up to
the globe of fire which seems to hang motionless
in the sky. Tears roll down his dirty
green cheeks.

"I know it—I'm dying—God—and I'm
glad. I don't want to go back—like this...." He
moves his hand listlessly towards his thigh.
His face glistens in the sun. "Mother," he
whimpers like a child, "mother...."

Like the hundreds of other men I had seen
die, Broadbent dies like a little boy
too—weeping, calling for his mother.

Tears cease to stream down his face. He
lies perfectly still.

In the rear I hear the stretcher-bearers
calling to each other.

*****

The hospital train moves slowly towards
Boulogne. It stops here and there to pick up
more cargo.

We come to a halt and a bright-faced
cockney girl comes into our car. She wears the
uniform of a Waac. In one of the berths a
man has died during the journey, but this
does not deter us from joking with the
new-comer. We shout our greetings to the girl.

"... what's the matter with you?"

"I'm sick ... goin' 'ome to blighty."

"You don't look sick."

"But I am."

"What are you sick of?"

"I've got mumps under the waistcoat."

"Mumps under the...?"

"I'm goin' t' 'ave a bybie ... ten quid and
a long leave...." She smiles.

*****

We stop at a junction near an officers'
hospital. The door of the car is swung open and
a man is carried aboard. The orderlies rest
the stretcher in the aisle of the car and look for
a berth for the new-comer.

He is a young German subaltern. He is
pallid with pain. He looks at us coldly as we
greet him and does not answer. He turns to
one of the orderlies. He speaks perfect
English.

"If this is occupied by privates, I ask that
I be removed to another car."

The men in the berths hoot and shout:

"Throw the bastard off."

"We don't want the damned swine...."

"Too good for us, eh, square-head?"

The officer maintains a frozen composure
under the barrage of oaths and taunts which
assail him. Finally he turns to one of the
orderlies.

"Well, are you going to take me to an
officers' van?"

The orderly hesitates and says:

"Orders were to bring you in here"—he
hesitates and adds—"sir."

The subaltern looks beyond him as though
he were an automaton and says:

"I wish to see the commanding officer of the
train."

The orderly leaves to find the medical officer
in charge.

There is a tense silence in the van. The
subaltern lies on his stretcher unconcerned.

In a little while the orderly returns and the
German is carried into another van.

From one of the upper berths a voice,
choked with hatred, says:

"God—seems like only their bloody privates
is Huns—their officers is"—he spits the last
word out with disgust—"gentlemen." After
a moment he adds: "And we're—we're—" He
cannot find the word and lapses into silence.

Another voice says:

"What the hell did you think this was—a
privates' war? Listen, brother, all we gotta
do is fight it. That's all."

*****

We are lying on our stretchers on the quay
at Boulogne, waiting to be carried on to the
hospital ship.

We wait for hours.

It is nearly evening.

A light drizzle begins to fall. Under the
lights the fine drops of rain sparkle on the
gray regulation blankets.

The wound in my foot begins to ache as
though it were being probed.

An orderly passes. I ask him for a cigarette.
He stops for a moment to talk with me.

"Is it dangerous crossing?" I ask. "They
say they torpedo them once in a while—like the
Llandovery Castle."

"The Llandovery Castle?" He laughs
contemptuously. "That was bloody murder,
brother. Our officers oughta be shot for that.
She was carryin' supplies and war material—it's
a god-damned shame, that's what I say."

He looks over his shoulder at the looming
black outlines of the waiting ship.

"You're lucky," he says, "this one is only
carryin' wounded...."

The Llandovery Castle—carrying supplies—war
material—I see the general reading us
the report of the sinking just before the battle
of Amiens—I see the bright sun shimmering
on his brass—I hear his cold, dispassionate
voice—"couldn't swim, poor chaps—wanton
act—must not go unavenged...."

I remember the funny jerky steps of the
prisoners as they came running towards us
with their hands held high above their heads—I
see the clasped hands lifted over the lip of the
shell-hole as we fired into it—clasped hands
silently asking for pity....

The orderly's voice breaks in:

"Well—give my regards to blighty—have
one for me."

I am carried up the gangplank.

********

The greatest pleasure in life is
that of reading. Why not then
own the books of great novelists
when the price is so small

Of all the amusements which can possibly
be imagined for a hard-working man, after
his daily toil, or in its intervals, there is
nothing like reading an entertaining book.
It calls for no bodily exertion. It transports
him into a livelier, and gayer, and more
diversified and interesting scene, and while he
enjoys himself there he may forget the evils
of the present moment. Nay, it accompanies
him to his next day's work, and gives him
something to think of besides the mere
mechanical drudgery of his every-day
occupation—something he can enjoy while absent,
and look forward with pleasure to return to.

Ask your dealer for a list of the titles
in Burt's Popular Priced Fiction

In buying the books bearing the
A. L. Burt Company imprint
you are assured of wholesome,
entertaining and instructive reading